How long can Brown have it both ways on relations with the US?

Gerard Baker has a great column in The Times this morning about how Gordon Brown is trying to play it both ways on relations with America. Baker dubs it the bat’s piss strategy, in memory of the Monty Python sketch of that name. But as Baker notes there will come a time when Brown will have to choose between playing to the domestic gallery and the strategic relationship with Washington. Indeed, it is a mistake to think that whoever succeeds Bush will adopt a foreign policy that the likes of Mark Malloch Brown will approve of.

Do read the whole of Baker’s piece and enjoy this wonderful quote that he has from a senior US official: “Brown does rather give the impression he was born in a suit and tie, doesn’t he?” Also worth looking at on this front is Con Coughlin’s perspective on the consequences of the Brown government shifting the emphasis of the war on terror from Iraq to Afghanistan.