Posted by Cockney Robin | Note: Cockney Robin has given up trying to spell in the American fashion and intends to spell as God intended him to!
Will the Brown government break up with the Bush Administration? The consensus seems to be "Yes, eventually, but don't hold your breath." It's going to be one of those drawn-out, painful ones, like my two-year break-up 25 years ago with a madly insecure girl called Claire.
After the alarm stirred up by Douglas Alexander's Washington speech (BBC), new cabinet minister Mark Malloch-Brown has caused a further rift in the lute by saying that the UK and the US will no longer be "joined at the hip." (BBC News) But Brown himself---an "Atlanticist," friendly to the US--- has been most anxious to deny even the appearance of any intention to detach (for now, anyway) the linked iliac crests of the two nations. (BBC News) Washington, in the manner of my former girlfriend, is murmuring of "mixed messages." (Times Online) In the meantime, Brown is saying what one always says under such circumstances, "My feelings for you haven't changed....Nothing's changed, I swear....well, okay, I'd fancy just a bit more space....No, my feelings haven't changed, I swear it...."
Eerily reminiscent yet again of my former lady love, the Bush Administration has evidently raised its eyebrows over some of the blokes Brown has chosen to hang with, in the cabinet and elsewhere. (Times Online) A Pentagon source has confided to the press, in that officious fashion of confidants throughout human history, that there is consternation over the appointment of Lord Malloch Brown to a senior position at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.(Times Online) Evidently, the Bush Administration is plaintively wondering why Brown insists on including among his posse a former deputy UN Secretary who has deplored the US's unilateral tendencies and Bush's "megaphone diplomacy." (Times Online)
My girlfriend Claire had similar concerns about the bad influence of my mate Gaz, who used to call her "Madam" (i.e., a bit of a bossy boots) and who she learned had once (at a blokes-only pub gathering I had furtively attended while she was visiting her sister in the Cotswold) attempted to persuade me to call it a day with her on the ground that she was too controlling. "She is always around, mate," said Gaz. "It's like the two of you are joined at the hip:" Yes, those were his exact words.
Of course there were advantages to this, particularly to an impecunious layabout who had never had much attention from girls of her class and inherited wealth. But the "joined at the hip" part of the arrangement did present certain obstacles to my ever doing anything at all without also involving her, which meant as a practical matter that I couldn't do anything at all that she didn't also want to do.
At any rate, at the first hint from me that a bit more freedom of movement might actually contribute to the quality of our relationship produced immediate alarm and consternation disproportionate to my actual intentions. While it's certainly true that in the back of my mind a feeling that we were really too close for comfort (mine, anyway) had taken root, and that this feeling was a seed that might eventually lead to a complete rebellion, it wasn't true at the start that I had any such intention. I just wanted a bit more control over my own activities.
Which I (knowing too little of politics perhaps to be blogging at all) infer is the present attitude of the Brown government. The UK has, after all, in its recent negotiations with the EU refused to give the EU more of a role in British foreign policy. (BBC News) Similarly, when urged by my mate Gaz to suggest to Claire that she be a little less there all the time, I laconically replied, "Mind your own business," thereby signifying my wish to be free of his interference. At the same time, I secretly wished to be equally free from being required to account to Claire for my every move. "It'll all end in tears whatever you do," Gaz predicted.
And so it began: the slow, painful division of two former inseparables, complete with the long nights of tears and reassurances, even while I gradually awakened to the fact that a relationship, for Claire, was very much an all or nothing proposition. Either she was everything to me all the time, or she was nothing. And I didn't want her to be nothing; I wanted to be in a relationship with her, but still free to go about with Gaz and the boys and to have the occasional night off or even the odd weekend in Paris without her company. And so it all ended in tears.
To return to my point: it seems absolutely clear to me---whatever reassurances Gordon Brown delivers to the Bush Administration---that even Brits friendly to the US (of which I am one) would like the freedom to make foreign policy decisions without US approval. Will the Bush Administration be able to accept this and give the UK some "space"? Will it accept that the UK may pursue its own objectives (which I don't think Brown sees as greatly distinct from US objectives) in its own fashion according to its own lights?
In a further parallel to my relationship with Claire, the Times Online continues:
Figures close to the Bush Administration say that they have been encouraged by the general tenor of Mr Brown’s remarks towards the US and that they understand his need to “play the domestic political game” by demonstrating a degree of independence. But even the limited and coded signals from Mr Brown in the past week are a significant departure from the attitude of Mr Blair, who maintained an intense embrace of the US foreign policy even through his darkest days in office.(Times Online)
Similarly, Claire initially told me that she was "encouraged by the general tenor of my assurances that I loved her forever and would never leave (which I more or less believed and intended) and that she understood my need for the appearance of independence among my mates. At the same time, she correctly interpreted my "limited and coded signals" as "a significant departure" from my previous "intense embrace" of her "You're either my conjoined twin, or nobody" attitude to our relationship. I was telling her---perhaps without fully acknowledging to myself that these were my feelings---that I didn't want to carry on a relationship on those terms.
Eventually, of course, we parted ways. The specific circumstances that made a breach inevitable was her increasingly hysterical insistence that I break off relations not only with lifelong friends but also "take a stand" with my family. The tipping point was a certain intended joint holiday which my mum wished to spend at a Spanish resort which Claire considered vulgar and which Claire wished to spend in Greece. I won't go into the details because certain aspects of that final confrontation still cause me to wake screaming in the night. Suffice it to say that it was, because it had to be, the last straw.
That said, I'd probably have sided with Claire if she hadn't been so obviously eager for the show down, even before my mother (who has some control issues herself) suggested that if Claire didn't care for our sort of holiday, she was free to go to Greece on her own while the rest of us drank our Watney's Red Barrel while watching big-arsed flamenco dancers half-heartedly tapping their heels. "He's not going," said Claire. And though almost the last thing I actually wanted was to spend my holiday in my family's preferred style, the last thing I wanted was to be told I didn't have a choice.
Will the Bush Administration demand a similar proof of loyalty from the UK with respect to Iran?
Looming on the horizon is the problem of Iran. In his news conference in Washington on Thursday, President Bush drew together, in one prepared sentence, the developing, and much contested, US accusations against Iran: "The same regime in Iran that is pursuing nuclear weapons and threatening to wipe Israel off the map is also providing sophisticated IEDs [improvised explosive devices] to extremists in Iraq who are using them to kill American soldiers."
Would Britain under Gordon Brown support military action against Iran?
It is unlikely that Britain would join such action. It is not inconceivable that it would support it, but only as a very, very last resort, with incontestable evidence that Iran's nuclear weapon ambitions were real (BBC News).
The eerie parallels go on and on. I might have sided with Claire by taking a stand against Spain if only Claire hadn't gone in with guns blazing, all full of ""adenoidal typists from Birmingham with flabby white legs and diarrhoea trying to pick up hairy bandy-legged waiters called Manuel and once a week there's an excursion to the local Roman Remains to buy Cherryade and melted ice cream and bleeding Watney's Red Barrel and one evening you visit the so called typical restaurant with local colour and atmosphere and you sit next to a party from Rhyl who keep singing "Torremolinos, Torremolinos" and complaining about the food - "It's so greasy isn't it?...""(Classic Python) After all, it wasn't that appealing a prospect to me.
But what tore it for me was the way she made it so clear that what she really wanted was a complete break in diplomatic relations so that she could drag me off to Greece without any of my irritating relatives in tow. If she'd just shown willing to give them a say, things might have gone differently. If she'd even conceded that I could make a choice different from hers, ditto
Breaking up is hard to do if it's really the last thing you want, but an intransigent significant other with an "all or nothing" attitude sometimes makes any other choice impossible.
PREVIOUSLY AT BNP:
Britain pulls away; Bush presses forward---Democrats push back. Should Democrats Give War a Chance? (UPDATED)
SOURCES
- Iraq commission tells Brown to replace troops with diplomacy (Independent)
- Commission seeks way out of Iraq for Brown (Independent)
- Washington uneasy over Brown’s anti-war ministers (Times Online)
- The subtle shift in British foreign policy (BBC News)
- Travel Agency/Watney's Red Barrel: Monty Python's Flying Circus Episode 31 (Classic Python)
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