‘If Brown pulls a stunt over Iraq…’

James Forsyth talks to insiders in Washington and London about the biggest dilemma facing the next Prime Minister — and finds that, as much as Brown might like to break free of an unpopular conflict, his options are severely limited

Gordon Brown could administer the coup de grâce to George W. Bush’s presidency. If, following the expected visits to Iraq and Washington in the first weeks of his premiership, Brown were to announce that British forces would be pulled out of Iraq by March 2008, then the already fragile support for the war in the US Congress would finally snap. Brown’s 100 days would be off to the blockbuster start that his acolytes have long dreamed of.

Seventy-two per cent of the American public disapprove of Bush’s handling of the war and 76 per cent believe that the ‘surge’ is not improving matters. Even normally loyal Republicans are making clear that their patience is limited. A rapid British withdrawal would therefore make the Bush administration’s position politically untenable. One senior Republican congressman warns, ‘If Britain pulls out, it’s game over.’ In these circumstances, the update on the progress of the surge that the new US commander, General Petraeus, is due to deliver in September would become largely academic. Bush would not just be a lame duck; he would be a paralysed president, with Congress refusing to fund the war except on its terms.

A declaration of an intention to quit by Brown — a Love Actually moment on steroids — would create a clean break with what the public regard as the biggest error of the Blair era. It would prove he was more Rottweiler than poodle, and instantly make him a hero to the growing majority on both sides of the Atlantic who see the effort in Iraq as futile; a feeling that is only bolstered by the Iraqi police’s apparent collusion in the kidnapping of British citizens there.