Obama and the Isolation of the British

Under Barack Obama, the “special relationship” between Washington and London has not been what it used to be. This factor must be taken into account if we wish to understand the new state of play in Europe.

An article in today’s Wall Street Journal by the Daily Telegraph’s Con Coughlin gives two reasons for the extraordinary cooling off in relations between the United States and the United Kingdom. One of these reasons is historical, the other ideological.

• Obama holds the colonial past of the British against them. His paternal grandfather was allegedly tortured by the British during the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya in the 1950s. In his autobiography, “The Audacity of Hope,” Obama compares the British Empire with apartheid in South Africa and with the Soviet Union.

• Unlike George W. Bush, Obama thinks Great Britain would be more useful to him if it entered fully into the politics of the European Union. The American president’s advisers are more in favor of European integration than previously, even in the area of defense.

In Washington, neither Gordon Brown nor David Cameron, the Conservative Party leader, expected to win the next election, but have received the kind of treatment traditionally afforded to America’s British allies. Whatever the outcome of the election, this on-going trend will influence British diplomacy, even if Cameron has so far adopted some very Euro-skeptical positions. This trend also explains the French attitude (see my last editorial, “Sarkozy and the isolation of the British”).