I have had some time to think about Gordon Brown’s performance in Washington now and I would agree with an American liberal friend I spoke to on the phone this evening that it was “not bad”. This is someone who desperately wanted Obama to win and who, on balance, would probably not want a Tory government in Britain if he put his mind to it.
In essence, Brown’s speech to Congress just doesn’t matter that much: not to Obama, not to the American public, not to the British public, not to Brown’s chances of winning the next election. It mattered to Brown, of course, as a devoted student of American history and politics.
I thought Oliver Burkeman in the Guardian captured it well: “By the end of the prime minister’s historic address to both houses of Congress, however, no one could have been in any doubt: Gordon Brown really loves America.
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