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Gordon Brown In America: The US Magna Carta

by | 31st, July 2007

bush_colonoscopy.jpgGORDON Brown must be pleased with his current trip to America. While UK papers concluded that Brown was no poodle, some of New York’s newspapers got their knickers in a twist hailing the Prime Minister’s visit as a victory for the transatlantic relationship and a defeat for “leftists” and “naysayers.” (Pic: Bush Colonscopy by Beau Bo D’or)

“Surely the two countries won’t see eye to eye on everything,” concedes the New York Post op-ed page under the headline LONDON STAYS UN-WOBBLY. “But it’s good to know that Britain – now in the person of Gordon Brown – still gets it. It’s a long war. Friends need to stick together.”

Meanwhile, the New York Sun is even more effusive:

“We may have fought for our liberty from British colonial rule,” intoned the Sun. “But we continue to owe the foundation of our thought and the inspiration of our free government to the land of the Magna Carta, Churchill, Thatcher, Blair, and, now, Brown.”

I’m not making this up. And the Sun is not done.

“It is encouraging to discover that the new prime minister is every bit as devoted to being our partner as was his predecessor. A fair amount of speculative nonsense has been written about how, to ensure a future electoral victory, Mr. Brown would be sure to distance himself from Mr. Bush and from Mr. Blair’s commitment to bringing democracy to Iraq. The naysayers were proven wrong, as they have been so often. There may be many differences between the characters of Messrs. Brown and Blair, but the message yesterday was be not misled that the two men thought differently, too, about Britain’s role in the world.”

Unless, of course, you opened the Daily Mail which thought Brown’s trip signaled the end of the Anglo-American affair. Or the Mirror which pointed out that while Brown reinforced the special relationship, he also served notice that he would begin pulling troops out of Iraq in two months.

More troubling for Brown, who heads to New York today to address the United Nations, could be the fact that other newspapers seemed to ignore his press conferences entirely. You have to look pretty hard to find the 212 words in today’s New York Daily News devoted to yesterday’s meetings. And the Wall Street Journal carried just two paragraphs–in its email newsletter.



Posted: 31st, July 2007 | In: Reviews Comments (22) | TrackBack | Permalink