Washington or Whitehall whispers?

As Matt reflected just after Obama’s election win, both David Cameron and Gordon Brown desperately want to be and be seen to be Barack Obama’s best friend. There’s a bit of a blow to the Cameron campaign today with a New Statesman story about how Obama branded Cameron a ‘lightweight’.

But a close read of it suggests that the sources for this claim might be in Whitehall not Washington:

“Instead, I have been told, Obama exclaimed of Cameron after their meeting: “What a lightweight!” He apparently also asked officials about Tory Euroscepticism. Soon, word about the rather awkward encounter between the two self-professed candidates of change made its way quietly round the upper echelons of Whitehall.”

James Macintyre’s piece is well worth reading but I must admit I’m slightly puzzled by this piece of analysis:

“…on defining international issues such as the invasion of Iraq (unlike Clinton and certainly unlike Cameron), Obama’s position was closer to that of mainstream Europe – which, as led by President Jacques Chirac of France, tended to be more ‘doveish’ than ‘hawkish’.”

James is right that Cameron voted for the Iraq war but he hardly did so with enthusiasm. Indeed, if the vote had been whipped the other way no one thinks he would have objected. In private, Cameron has been known to be derisive of a values-led foreign policy, sneering about ‘you neo-cons’ to his more idealistic colleagues.

Cameron and Obama’s foreign policy instincts line up all too closely. Us neo-cons can only hope that Cameron finds his own Hillary Clinton before he enters Downing Street.