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Saturday 22 November 2008

A rather less than special relationship

Now we know: Brown is a European, not an Atlanticist

The next best friend of the US may well be France

So it comes to this. British voters are angry because they believe that Tony Blair subordinated their nation’s interest to that of the United States, especially since US foreign policy was in the hands of the hated neocons and their president, George W. Bush. So Mr Brown went to Camp David to distance himself both from American foreign policy and the American President. Which he succeeded in doing — more than even he imagines.

Almost immediately, as if a free hand in foreign affairs is a burden too heavy to bear — aside from pressing for aid programmes for Africa — Brown is setting about surrendering his new-found freedom from America to the EU. And permanently. Just at a time when the EU has proved ineffect-ual in dealing with Iran, President Sarkozy is pushing for a protectionist trade policy, France and Germany are cowering before a resurgent Russia that has unsheathed the energy weapon, the EU is turning out regulations at a pace that even Chancellor Brown could not match, and every EU leader with the sole exception of the new Prime Minister is assuring his and her constituents that the treaty is simply the constitution without the flag.

All of this makes something of a mockery of Brown’s support for Trident, and his agreement to provide a base in North Yorkshire for America’s new missile defence system. Once the EU has control of British foreign policy, the new treaty provides it with the tools to declare such moves inconsistent with EU policy. And the European court will surely agree.

But the news for America is not all bad. Now that Brown has forsaken his American holidays for Scotland, Nicolas Sarkozy has decided that he prefers New Hampshire to any spot in France, although, after a shouting match, he had to strike a deal with photo-graphers to get the privacy this media-obsessed leader says he craves. New Hampshire is right around the corner from Kennebunkport, the Bush family manse. Une relation spéciale in the making?

Irwin Stelzer is director of economic policy studies at the Hudson Institute and a columnist for the Sunday Times

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