Obama could be a great ally to a prime minister — but not this one

Gordon Brown has absurdly high expectations of the political boost he will get from this week’s trip to Washington and the G20 summit in London next month, says James Forsyth. It is David Cameron who stands to be the likely beneficiary of the special relationship

The ‘legacy’ might be an extremely touchy subject in Downing Street these days, but the speech reflected how Gordon Brown wanted history to remember him: a consequential prime minister who helped steer the world through one of its great crises. When the senators and congressmen rose to applaud him, all the ambitions that Brown has nursed throughout his political career must have seemed within reach. Here he was, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, lecturing a specially convened joint session of the US Congress about the need for a ‘global new deal’. But, in truth, the moment was more like the last wish granted a condemned man than the fulfilment of a lifetime’s ambition.