Brown gets his Oval Office moment

Well, after all that, it’s over. Brown looked like a groupie that had just been invited on stage as he sat in the Oval Office beaming from ear to ear beside the Messiah. It was a very different outcome to that he imagined: there was no podium to speak at, no formal press conference, no toothpaste sharing, none of the formalities that have been extended to Tony Blair. Brown was on the same losers chair that the soon-to-be-ex-Japanese PM was on last month. Photographers were invited in, then a handful of journalists took questions from behind the sofa. Brown then grew perhaps a little to excited, referring to the President as “Barack”. Strange move, given what sticklers for titles they are in Washington. The informality that was not reciprocated, Obama referred to “Prime Minister Brown”. We could see behind them that the space where the bust of Churchill used to stand (a gift from Blair, that Obama actually sent back to No10) there now stands a bust of Lincoln.