Brown flies to Washington
By Ian Dunt
The prime minister will fly to the United States today to meet with president Barack Obama, where he will push for renewed momentum to the ‘special relationship’.
Gordon Brown wants the UK and US to work together on poverty, disease and terrorism, as well as the global downturn.
He will become the first European leader to travel to the US, ending an increasingly unpleasant competition among European leaders to be seen in America’s favour.
He will also be given the honour on Wednesday of addressing both houses of Congress, after attending a meeting in the White House tomorrow.
Speaking after an emergency EU summit over the weekend, Mr Brown said: “Let me finish with a clear message which I will take with me to Washington which I believe all European leaders in Brussels today would agree to, and I believe President Obama would agree to too: bold global action, a global grand bargain, is not now just necessary but it is vitally urgent to deal with the challenges of the world economy.
“And when, in exactly one month’s time, world leaders gather in London to take the big decisions necessary to secure our economic future we must, and we will, succeed.”
There are various practical reasons for Mr Brown to be given the first ticket for meetings with the new American president, not least the hosting of the G20 meeting in London next month.
But most observers view the invitation as an acknowledgment of the UK’s role in Afghanistan and the enduring appeal of tight US-UK relations in European and international affairs.
Mr Brown was certainly selling that message over the weekend, with an opinion piece in the Sunday Times outlining how the relationship can forge new achievements on a range of policy issues.
“I believe there is no challenge so great or so difficult that it cannot be overcome by America, Britain and the world working together,” he wrote.
“That is why President Obama and I will discuss this week a global new deal, whose impact can stretch from the villages of Africa to reforming the financial institutions of London and New York – and giving security to the hard-working families in every country.”
He continued: “Winston Churchill described the joint inheritance of Britain and America as not just a shared history but a shared belief in the great principles of freedom and the rights of man – what Barack Obama has described as the enduring power of our ideals – democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope.
“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. And as America stands at its own dawn of hope, I want that hope to be fulfilled through us all coming together to shape the 21st century as the first century of a truly global society.”
Downing Street expects the economy, Afghanistan, climate change and wider global issues including the Middle East to be discussed by Mr Brown and Mr Obama in their meeting tomorrow.
