Thursday, 22nd July 2010
melanie phillips
Oh dear; it really is turning into a comedy act
11:34am
One of the main reasons people have been purring over the Cleggeroon coalition government is that it is apparently so very competent. David Cameron seems born to rule; he and several of his ministers have brains the size of planets; government once again appears smooth and effortless, in such pleasing contrast to the incoherence, dysfunctionality and chaos of its Labour predecessor.
That was until this week.
Consider. I wrote here yesterday about the incoherence by both Cameron and Nick Clegg over UK strategy for Afghanistan. Even as the reverberations from this muddle were spreading, Cameron was making another, even more startling mistake. He told Sky News:
...I think it's important in life to speak as it is, and the fact is that we are a very effective partner of the U.S., but we are the junior partner...We
Wednesday, 21st July 2010
The brilliant military strategy of definite conditionality
6:27pm
Jack Straw was right. After the deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg told the Commons this afternoon a) that
we are absolutely determined - given how long we've been in Afghanistan, given that we are six months into an 18-month military strategy, embarking on a new political strategy - that we must be out in a combat role by 2015
but also b) that
this, of course, is consistent with the timetable for the Afghan forces assuming responsibility for security - as agreed in the Kabul conference yesterday - in 2014,
Straw pointed out that the question of whether UK forces will definitely leave by 2015 or whether their departure was conditional on the Afghan forces being able to take control of security in the region was now as clear as mud. David Cameron himself...
USA Today, 22 July 2010
Despite all the false starts and nail-biting repair attempts on the ruptured oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, the stain on the sea will eventually dissipate. But can the same be said about the stain on the “special relationship” between the U.S. and Britain?
As British Prime Minister David Cameron set off for his visit to the USA this week, he said Britain was not dependent upon America and did not owe it “blind loyalty.” This comes, of course, in the wake of months of President Obama’s tongue-lashing of “British Petroleum” — a name BP had not used for many years.
The British people took the president’s words very much amiss, suspicious that he was unfairly singling out BP for blame as a proxy for bashing Britain itself. The British public sourly noted that the role of the two U.S. firms involved in the managing of the Deepwater Horizon rig was ignored, as was the fact that 39% of BP is owned by Americans.
The president’s aggressive rhetoric, including a White House threat to hold a “boot to the throat” of BP, was blamed for wiping billions of pounds off the company’s value. This directly threatened British pension funds, which are heavily reliant on the company’s dividend payments.
But there was also something rather deeper and more atavistic in the British response. Obama’s aggression seemed to bring to the fore a British resentment of the U.S. that is never far from the surface.
This comprises a toxic mixture of intellectual snobbery; a historic fury at America’s late entry into World War II, after which it was perceived to lay claim to the glory; and perhaps most important of all, a deep envy of American wealth and power by a country that decades ago lost not only its empire but also its cultural way and sense of purpose.
Nevertheless, Britain has some cause for complaint from the disdain that Obama has displayed well before the Gulf oil spill. First, he pointedly returned to the British Embassy the bust of Winston Churchill that a previous government had bequeathed to the White House as a gift; then he sided with Argentina in its calls for U.N.-brokered negotiations with Britain over the Falkland Islands.
His perceived scapegoating of BP blew the cap off this deep well of bubbling British national affront. A YouGov poll conducted in June found that only 54% of British respondents said they felt favorably toward the United States — down from 66% one month previously.
When asked specifically about how Obama’s handling of the BP oil spill had affected the relationship between Britain and the U.S., 64% said it had weakened it. And 45% said they thought that the relationship has gotten worse since Obama took office in November 2008 — a dramatic increase from the 25% who responded this way the previous month.
As a result, Cameron was criticized for backing the president in his attack on BP for failing to stem the flow of oil, saying he understood Obama’s “frustration.” This was almost certainly because, although he is a Conservative leader, Cameron has taken his party to the left by adopting a green and anti-Big Business agenda.
With feeling in Britain running so high, however, eventually Cameron did publicly warn that BP’s survival was important, and he was credited here with getting the U.S. president to agree that the oil giant must not go under.
Even though the sound and fury over the disaster has calmed, however, the “special relationship” between Britain and the United States has not returned to normal. Something has changed. And the situation is replete with irony.
When President Obama was elected, the British were delighted. They believed he would usher in a repudiation of the George W. Bush years and end what they saw as America’s tendency to throw its weight around the world.
Ironically, it was precisely that perception that got up their noses over BP. They thought that America had now alighted upon some new folk to push around — the British themselves.
Yet even though they have become disillusioned with Obama, the agenda with which they associate him — to end American exceptionalism — is gathering steam in the U.K.
It is hard to overestimate the poisonous belief that Britain was dragged on America’s coattails into wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that were against its national interest. However strongly others might deplore such sentiments, they have led to a cooling toward the U.S. across the British political spectrum.
Last March, the Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee said Britain should be “less deferential” and more assertive in its dealings with America, and it recommended that the term “special relationship” be abandoned.
The British government would seem to agree. In a speech a few weeks ago, Foreign Secretary William Hague— while calling the bond with the U.S. “unbreakable” — nevertheless said Britain should pursue “enlightened national interest” through developing alliances with countries such as Brazil and India rather than relying on America and Europe.
In part, the Cameron/Liberal Democrat coalition government is reacting to the public’s anti-Americanism. But it also seems to have concluded that Obama is a weak president who has proved indecisive against his country’s enemies while lashing out at its allies.
The oil might stop gushing into the Gulf of Mexico — but the waters of the “special relationship” upon which it so toxically poured still remain troubled.
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