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What would be Brown's US policy?
Because he lacks Blair's reputation in Britain as 'Bush's poodle', Brown is better able to challenge and reverse growing anti-American sentiment in Britain as well as in Europe.
- By John O'Sullivan, Special to Gulf News
- Published: 00:00 May 17, 2007
- Brown may never be loved by Americans as Blair was loved. But he can hope to be respected as a reliable ally and a good friend.
- Image Credit: Reuters
Will the departure of Tony Blair from No 10 Downing Street mean the end of the Anglo-American "special relationship"? As Gordon Brown prepares to succeed Blair as prime minister, the conventional wisdom is that he will never match Blair's standing with Americans.
In strictly literal terms that is probably true. History gave the retiring prime minister the unrivalled opportunity of September 11th to declare his solidarity with the US. Fortunately, Brown is unlikely to be given a similar chance. In addition he lacks Blair's easy charm and seemingly effortless eloquence.
He is the sober and industrious apprentice to Blair's relaxed but naturally charismatic leader. Like Richard Nixon, Brown looks as if he was given a brief case for Christmas - and was delighted with the gift.
When it comes to policy, however, there may not be a great deal of difference between Blair and Brown. And what difference there is may be to Brown's advantage - especially, if surprisingly, with Americans.
Although there have been well-publicised spats between the two residents of Downing Street, most New Labour policies of the last 10 years have been jointly agreed between the prime minister and his chancellor. Sure, Brown frequently blocked or watered down the market reforms of public services that Blair wanted.
Since the 2005 election, however, he has had to face the fact that his own favoured policy of improving public services by simply pouring money into them has plainly failed. Health and education are in dire straits despite vast increases in public spending. And now the money is running out.
Most economists now think that Brown's successor as chancellor will either have to cut public spending or to raise taxes. For that reason among others Brown has been more sympathetic to Blair's market reforms in the last few years.
As prime minister he will probably push choice, variety and limited private provision in public services, even further than Blair has done. It would be a nice paradox if Brown ended up achieving more of the "Blair revolution" than Blair himself.
That is not foreordained. There is a war in Britain's new leader between Brown the "moralist"- the devout Church of Scotland puritan who knows that a healthy society of self-reliant citizens cannot be built by making young and old dependent upon public handouts - and Brown the "control freak", the Euro-socialist technocrat who wants to dictate economic and social outcomes for everyone through large complex schemes of income redistribution.
It will be a hard-fought battle. But prudence and the need for economy are now firmly on the side of Brown the moralist.
If Brown the moralist wins, that will have the incidental effect of moving him further away from Europe and towards America. Brown has never been as Euro-sceptical as some Euro-sceptics wanted as a check on Blair's Europhilia. He was ambivalent at best on whether Britain should sink itself further into a European federation.
On the one hand he thought that Britain's economy would do better outside the Europe's single currency, the Euro, than inside it. He proved triumphantly correct on that score (just as Blair proved to be disastrously wrong.) On the other hand he moved the British welfare state steadily towards European levels of taxation and public spending.
If Brown is now considering a blend of welfare reform and budgetary stringency, he will want to learn from America's more relevant experience.
In doing so, he will find experienced guides among his American friends who range from former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan (whom he made an advisor to the UK Treasury) to almost every economic veteran of the Clinton administration.
Greenspan, though, is a Republican exception. Like Blair until he bonded with Bush, Brown has selected his American friends mainly from among Democrats. That will scarcely harm him if the Democrats retain Congress and win the White House in two years.
Strong links
Indeed, Brown as Labour leader is likely to build strong links between his party and America's new governing elite. A Brown-Clinton or Brown-Obama honeymoon in 2009 - a distinctly wonkish honeymoon is both cases - is very easy to imagine.
As prime minister and a national leader, however, Brown will strive to maintain good relations with Republicans in the White House too - including for the moment George W. Bush. He will almost certainly succeed.
For Brown has both the ability and the incentive to play a decisive role in improving both the special relationship and US-European relations. Because he lacks Blair's reputation in Britain as "Bush's poodle", Brown is better able to challenge and reverse growing anti-American sentiment in Britain as well as in Europe.
And because the new French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has declared himself to be a friend of the US, Brown will not want to be pushed to the sidelines by a new-old special relationship between Paris and Washington.
Brown may never be loved by Americans as Blair was loved. But he can hope to be respected as a reliable ally and a good friend. And in the end that could be more important.
John O'Sullivan, former adviser to prime minister Lady Thatcher, is the author of "The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister", Regnery 2007, and a memberof Benador Associates.
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