With Friends Like Obama

What’s with President Obama throwing friends of the US under that old bus of his? Israel’s not happy with  him and Poland has to be scratching their heads. You’d think that any President of the United States of America would have the good sense to treat our friends well.

Although I’m no big fan of Gordon Brown, the last time I checked Great Britain is still a close ally of the US. Which is why it’s so odd that the President and First Lady chose to snub the PM. It hasn’t gone unnoticed in the UK.

On US radio’s Garrison show today, I was asked for my reaction as a true born Englishman to President Obama’s double insult – first the sending back of the Winston Churchill bust, then his snub to Gordon Brown. “Tough one. Really tough one,” I said, torn – as most of surely are – between delight at seeing Brown roundly humiliated, and dismay at having the special relationship so peremptorily, cruelly and bafflingly ruptured.

Iain Martin is quite right here: no matter how utterly rubbish we have become as a nation in the Blair/Brown years, Britain’s friendship is something Obama will come to regret having dispensed with so lightly. This was not the act of a global statesman, but of a hormonal teenager dismissing her bestest of best BFs for no other reason than that she felt like it and she can, so there. 

What was the guy thinking? In researching my new book Welcome to Obamaland, I discovered that Obama’s judgment is pretty dreadful – but this? My favourite theory so far – suggested by presenter Greg Garrison – was that it was a move calculated to please his Lady Macbeth. At the moment in Britain, we’re still in the “Doesn’t she look fabulous in a designer frock” stage of understanding of Michelle Obama. Gradually, though, we’ll begin to realise that she is every bit the terrifying executive’s wife that Hillary Clinton was. Or, shudder, Cherie Blair.

So much for improving our standing in the world.