From:
The Guardian, Tuesday 18 May 2010
Simon Tisdall: Poodle politics of UK and US are over – for now
Obama's keenness to congratulate David Cameron suggests Washington feels less secure about British support
Keen to avoid the derision heaped upon Tony Blair in his supposed role as "George Bush's poodle", David Cameron promised in opposition that any government led by him would not kowtow to the US. "Britain should never be frightened of saying no to America," he said, reflecting Tory concerns about New Labour's record of sometimes undignified and self-defeating subservience.
The foreign secretary, William Hague, who harbours Palmerstonian ambitions to make Britain a force in the world again, takes a similar view. Relations with Washington should be "solid but not slavish", he says. As for Nick Clegg, he instinctively looks east to Europe, not west to America, while many Lib Dems frankly distrust the Americans. Before taking office, Clegg said it was time to puncture "the spell of default Atlanticism".
Given this prickly background, the gushing, almost cloying warmth with which Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, greeted Cameron and co's arrival in Downing Street might seem surprising. On a personal level, the idea that a tax-and-spend liberal can find much in common with a small-government, fiscal conservative seems improbable. And then there is Obama's perceived record of anti-Britishness, source of much hurrumphing on the British right.
Since taking office last year, the US president has been variously accused (in Britain) of dissing Winston Churchill by removing his bust from the Oval office, siding with the Argies over the Falklands, conspiring with "federal Europe", ignoring the sacrifices of America's foremost ally in Afghanistan, and being routinely rude to Gordon Brown.
Much of this media chit-chat is pure bilge, arising in part from the right's guilty suspicions that Obama is no fan of Britain's historical world role, not least its colonial record in east Africa. One controversy – last year's extradition to Libya of the Lockerbie bomber – caused genuine bilateral angst. And Obama's almost daily admonishment of BP over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill does seem a trifle harsh, given the company's acceptance of full responsibility. The Daily Mail called his finger-pointing "unpresidential" and possibly "anti-British".
Obama is certainly not averse to taking a dig at Britain, America's old imperial master. In a joking speech at this month's White House correspondents' dinner, he lampooned both media presumption and British failure by imagining a London newspaper headline dated 3 July 1776 saying: "Senior Whig official: Talks break down, independence dead". As commentator Ben Macintyre has suggested, Obama's more sombre view of the British, as gleaned from his memoir, Dreams from My Father, is of a people "ill-dressed, pasty-faced and racially arrogant, cramped, spotty and joyless".
All the more reason, then, to marvel at Cameron's joyful reception. Having telephoned him the moment he walked into Downing Street, Obama praised the new prime minister as "a smart, dedicated, effective leader" – before he even got started. More amazing still, Obama resurrected Churchill's historically loaded phrase, which he had previously eschewed. The two nations' "extraordinary special relationship... is not going to go away," he said. Visiting Washington at the weekend, Hague was awash with more honeyed words from Hillary Clinton.
Britain's new leaders should ask themselves a question: why are the Americans, always hard-nosed, suddenly making nice? There are several possible answers. The US wants continuing solidarity on Iran, Middle East peace, counterterrorism, nuclear proliferation, and financial recovery. It wants London to play a constructive role in Europe; as vice-president Joe Biden recently told the European parliament, Washington needs a strong, reliable partner in Brussels. Most of all, the US is counting on British support in Afghanistan, as the war approaches a likely turning point.
Agreement on much if not all of this would have been taken for granted in Washington, had Labour retained power. What's changed now is that Cameron, and particularly the reluctant Atlanticist Clegg with his lack of enthusiasm for America's foreign adventures, his doubts about Trident renewal, and his ardent pro-Europeanism, are unknown, potentially contradictory quantities. Obama can no longer be certain which way Britain will jump. And, as the latest recruit to the ranks of declining imperial powers, the US itself is no longer as cocksure as it was.
It's the lesson "Yo Blair" never learned: that respect and influence come from standing up to the big guy, or at least rattling his cage now and then, not from simpering sycophancy. For now at least, poodles are passé. Insults are out, hugs are in.
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