UPDATE: Welcome TNR Plank people. Nice to see y’all again…
Gordon Brown’s approach to the United States has followed the traditional “Good cop, Bad Cop” approach. Having let his subordinates off the leash to disparage US foreign policy and hint that Washington should no longer be able to count on whole-hearted British support, Brown today played the role of the reassuring and conciliatory policeman who just wants to be your friend.
The Prime Minister’s visit to Camp David followed criticism of the US from Brown’s protege Douglas Alexander and Mark Malloch Brown, formerly head of the UN Development Programme and newly installed at the foreign office. Though the White House surely understands that Brown needed to show a degree of independence for domestic political reasons, it was still irritated by the harshness of the anti-Americanism emanating from Whitehall.
Alexander had praised “soft power” and said Britain should not measure a nation’s might by “what they could destroy”.
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