Cameron to Meet Bush at White House
Since Michael Howard had a visit to the White House cancelled, after Karl Rove made it very clear that he would not be welcome because of his comments on the legality of the Iraq war, the Tories have found it almost impossible to get any of their leaders to meet with George W. Bush.
Until now...
Next week George Bush will meet with David Cameron and we will witness a further deterioration in the relationship between George Bush and Gordon Brown.
And aides to Bush are making it very clear that this is a deliberate snub to Brown:The meeting, which has been the subject of intense negotiations between the Tories and Mr Bush's aides, will take the form of a "drop in" while Mr Cameron and William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, hold talks at the White House with the national security adviser, Stephen Hadley.
White House aides said the meeting with Mr Bush probably would last up to an hour.
It will be the first visit by a Conservative leader to Washington since Iain Duncan Smith met the president six years ago - the longest period the Conservatives have spent in relative exile from the US since the 1930s.
So the poisoned chalice of Bush's politically toxic friendship has been passed to Cameron. Perhaps he is foolish enough to view this as a victory of sorts. Although, he would be wise to note that Brown has gone to great lengths to stress his friendship with the USA whilst simultaneously distancing himself from the current inhabitant of the Oval Office.Aides say that the president does not feel the deep sense of loyalty to Mr Brown that he felt towards his predecessor, Tony Blair, which stopped him from forging warmer relations with previous Tory leaders.
A foreign policy adviser to the White House said: "The Bush administration is pretty down on Brown, so they would be happy to meet Cameron. Bush was utterly loyal to Blair and wouldn't have talked to or promoted any rival. With Brown, they feel no such obligation."
As Howard crashes from power in Australia, Cameron would do well to remember the fate that befell all those who associated themselves too closely to the Toxic Texan. Berlusconi, Aznar, Blair and now Howard: all gone.
Quite why Cameron would want to associate himself with such damaged goods is simply beyond me, unless he sees this merely as a chance to show himself off as some kind of international statesman.Nile Gardiner, a former adviser to Baroness Thatcher and now expert on transatlantic relations at Heritage, the leading Conservative think tank with close ties to the Bush administration, said: "The special relationship is certainly beginning to suffer under Gordon Brown. There is now greater willingness on part of the White House and the administration to reach out to the Conservatives.
"The Blair era is very clearly over and that has created an important opportunity for the Conservatives to move in. There was still some bad blood over David Cameron's remarks on the anniversary of 9/11 last year so it will be an important meeting."
Cameron has been seeking to reinvent the Tories as a new kind of conservative party, one that cares about the environment and opposes the Iraq war.
Which only makes association with Bush all the odder.
One thing is for certain, there will be no tears over this at Number Ten. Indeed, the more Bush meets with Brown's political rivals, the less constrained Brown will feel at pulling away from Bush's disastrous policies.
Click title for full article.
No comments:
Post a Comment