A partnership or marriage?

There have been moments when the Anglo-American alliance has been pretty special - think Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan - and there have been times when it was literally a relationship. Harold Macmillan (who, like Churchill, had an American mother) was uncle by marriage to John F. Kennedy's sister "Kick".

David Ormsby-Gore, another kinsman of the Kennedy clan, became British ambassador in Washington at JFK's request, then a fully liveried prince of the Camelot court.

"Our kind of ambassador," the president crowed as he granted access of which Ormsby-Gore's successors could only dream. In return, Her Britannic Majesty's representative supplied the architect of the Bay of Pigs invasion with Cuban cigars, smuggled into the US past the watchdogs of Kennedy's own embargo in the diplomatic bag.

The Mac and Jack show became the model for the special relationship that misty-eyed British diplomats clung to for years - the image of avuncular Britain whispering Grecian wisdoms in the ear of the American president. The preferred analogy is no longer Classical; America today is from Mars and Europe from Venus, but the point remains the same and Britain sees its role as the interpreter between them.

The latest chapter is written today, when Gordon Brown makes the first trip by a European leader to the Obama White House. It has prompted a stock-take of the status of the relationship. The view of many in Washington is that Barack Obama is no sentimentalist: his aim is to pursue common interests, rather than common bloodlines, and what he wants is a business partnership, not a marriage. There are undeniable opportunities for Brown here. The two men are the most self-consciously intellectual types to run their respective nations in many a moon and they share a belief in the current primacy of economic issues and a Keynesian analysis of the requirements.

Diplomats stress that the views of the Obama administration are more in synch with those of the British government than was the case under George W. Bush. "There is a very, very significant degree of convergence across the waterfront," a senior British official remarked last week. But for a true marriage (and, at its best, that's what the special relationship is - Thatcher called Reagan the second most important man in her life after husband Denis), you need two to tango.

In an article published on Sunday, Brown was waxing lyrical in Churchillian fashion: "Britain and America may be separated by the thousands of miles of the Atlantic, but we are united by shared values that can never be broken. I want to do more to strengthen even further our relationship with America." As my American friends say: "Good luck with that."

Despite the commonality of interests on economics, Afghanistan, Iran, climate change and the Middle East peace process, Obama is a political flirt, bestowing his stardust on expectant international partners, such as the diminutive French pupil and that shrewish German girl, like a particularly charismatic boy at a school disco. This is bad news for good old John Bull, who follows him around the playground and who is always there with raised fists when the head boy gets into a fight, but who irritates by tugging at his sleeve, constantly demanding: "I am your best friend, aren't I?"

Obama has yet to experience the futility of asking Brussels and the rest of Nato for anything useful, and he is in no mood to do things the way they have always been done. His cold calculus was on display when the White House announced the Brown visit and hailed not the special relationship but a "special partnership".

Sources close to his inner circle say there will be no automatic seat for the UK at Obama's top table, that Britain will have to "pay a price" if it wants to maintain its traditional diplomatic clout in Washington. This is not to say that there aren't grounds for hope that the Brown government can win influence on the new terms. Brown's economic team, led by Baroness Vadera, is well known here.

The Prime Minister developed a chummy relationship with Obama economic gurus Larry Summers and Robert Reich during languid summers on Cape Cod while he was chancellor. Both men taught Brown proteges Ed Balls and Ed Miliband at Harvard. Simon McDonald, the PM's senior security adviser, is on good terms with Obama's National Security Adviser, General Jim Jones, and his deputy, Denis McDonough. Britain's current ambassador, Sir Nigel Sheinwald, has won plaudits from Washington foreign policy pooh-bahs for getting to know members of the new gang. Diplomats believe that the romantic old ties will not be easily cast aside.

One prediction: Obama will have had the words "special relationship" drummed into his skull by the time he joins Brown for their joint press conference.

As America is discovering, Obama is a master of cloaking his relentless rejection of past norms in acceptable bromides. Brown's goal is somehow to repeat Sir Christopher's colonic contortions while playing harder to get than Blair. If he wants to proffer a gift to replace the Churchill bust, he could do worse than hand over a biography of Franklin Roosevelt, though with the New Deal bits ripped out. Obama dreams of emulating FDR's economic stimulus; he has yet to prove that he has grasped the essence of his hero's belief in the value of the special relationship