Gordon Brown
Posted on 07/13/2007 12:48:15 PM PDT by Stoat
Gordon Brown
Gordon Brown brought his Cabinet into line tonight in an unprecedented move to reassure the White House that he was not going cool on the special relationship.
After just over two weeks as Prime Minister, Mr Brown asked his chief of staff to write to all Cabinet ministers emphasising the importance of the link with America and reminding them of his own words that “we will not allow people to separate us from the United States in dealing with the common challenges we face around the world.”
He acted urgently to mend fences with American administration after a day of confusion in London and Washington over the implications of a speech in the American capital by one of his closest allies, Douglas Alexander, which was widely seen as a criticism of US foreign policy.
Mr Brown will also fly to Washington soon - probably within the next two and half weeks - to see Mr Bush, earlier than had been widely anticipated.
British officials contacted the White House directly this morning to emphasise that no slight had been intended and Downing Street described as “nonsense” and “extraordinary” the interpretations placed by some newspapers on Mr Alexander’s speech.
The Times understands that the speech was sent to No 10 and seen by several senior officials who did not see fit to refer it up to Mr Brown.
Downing Street tonight denied that the letter to Cabinet ministers - in the name of Tom Scholar, Mr Brown’s chief of staff - was a slapdown for Mr Alexander.
It was clearly, however, a warning from Mr Brown to the Cabinet to refrain from making remarks that could be interpreted as a weakening of his government’s support for American foreign policy.
He was prepared to be seen to be laying down the law so early in his premiership because of his fears of causing an unnecessary rift with the US after what American officials have seen as a series of signals that he will not give the same unqualified support to Mr Bush as Tony Blair did.
Mr Brown knows that his appointment of the former UN official Mark Malloch Brown, a critic of American foreign policy, as a minister has caused unhappiness in Washington.
In the letter to ministers Mr Brown also reminded them of the words of David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, that none of the world’s biggest problems could be solved without the United States.
In his address to the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington DC, Mr Alexander said isolationism "simply does not work in an interdependent world".
"And so we must form new alliances, based on common values, ones not just to protect us from the world, but ones which reach out to the world.”
He called for a "multilateralist, not unilateralist” approach that meant a rules-based international system.”
After several papers, including The Times, reported the remarks as a coded critique of American foreign policy, Mr Brown took to the airwaves to stress there was no change in his government’s stance on the US.
But Mr Alexander's speech appeared to have shaken relations between the new government in Britain and President Bush.
Officials confirmed they were engaged in a major fire-fighting exercise, handling a "heavy traffic" of calls from worried counterparts in Washington.
Mr Alexander’s advisers were today being accused of "naive news management". One well-placed source in Washington said: "You can't come here and deliver a message just to British voters. It's not the same as sniping from the Treasury, Brown is now Prime Minister and people in DC are going to pay him a whole lot more attention."
Nile Gardiner, director of the Margaret Thatcher Centre for Freedom at the right-wing Heritage Foundation in Washington, claimed today that there was "growing concern" in the White House at the direction of the British government.
"Although Brown himself is going to great lengths to say he is still committed to the alliance, people around him like Douglas Alexander are busy changing the tone of British foreign policy." "This is a classic manoeuvre designed to show Brown is not rocking the boat while still getting the message he wants over to British voters."
This included the emphasis placed by Mr Alexander on global poverty and climate change, issues which he appeared to elevate above the fight against terrorism in his speech on Thursday.
Mr Gardiner said the Foreign Office appointment of Lord Malloch-Brown - a prominent critic of Mr Bush in his previous job at the United Nations - was regarded as another hostile signal and gone down particularly badly. The Bush Administration is now "well aware that Brown is seeking to distance himself from them", he added.
Future relations will "depend very much on how Brown and Bush get on when they meet later this summer" said Mr Gardiner. "I'm sure there will be a public display of unity but, behind the scenes, there will also be some quite tough negotiations over issues like Iran and Iraq - on which there appears to be a very different dynamic than that which drove the Bush-Blair relationship."
Unfortunately, in today's world "naive news management" can be described as not realizing that the press will instantly put the very worst possible spin on anything pertaining to the United States, and will accentuate anything that could possibly damage the relations of the US and other nations, particularly in the context of the War on Terror.
B U M P
I read the supposedly anti-American excerpts (not the whole text). He basically said that strength is founded, in this new century, on alliances that countries build together in cooperation, not in alliances that are primarily military.
I thought that was just new age spin, but troubling that the new PM didn’t have such texts pre-vetted before delivery.
PM Brown has his hands full.
Brown flatters himself......he OUGHT to be worrying what British commoners think of him.....there are still not enough west-hating moozlimes in Britain to give him the smooth sailing he tried to create for himself with his BIG MOUTH, LOL
Good to hear. Now get rid of Bollock-Brown.
Sorry FR, meant to use an Asterisk there.
I had great hopes for him in times past, but have been reconsidering my perspectives since some time before his rise to PM.
Brown hails Bush's war (Great Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer delivers glowing endorsement)
Hopefully his forthcoming trip to the United States will serve to clarify any misunderstandings.
We’re going to be hit again and hard, and the rest of the world will, incorrectly, blame the attack on the fact that we ousted Hussein and tried to bring Iraqis into the 21st century with democracy. We were attacked repeatedly in the years before GWB became President, well before 9/11. Clinton ignored these attacks and we were perceived as ‘weak, a paper tiger’. (There’s nothing like positive reinforcement to encourage more of the same.) Alas, Liberals have selective memories, and they’ll blame the next attack on GW, a big lie. The MSM will trumpet this baloney through ‘08.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.