PM BROWN DOWNGRADES THE USA-UK ALLIANCE

THE CORNER:

Brown Downgrades Anglo-American Alliance [Iain Murray]

It's been the mainstay of world diplomacy since the 1930s, but it isn't good enough for Gordon Brown. He and his diplomats have decided that the term "special relationship" is no longer to be used to describe Anglo-American relations.

Tim Montgomerie has the story.

CENTRE RIGHT:

The term "special relationship" is no longer in use at Britain's Washington Embassy. One British diplomat told Sunday Telegraph journalist Tim Shipman that the term wasn't much of a career enhancer.

The new British Ambassador to the USA "frowns on the phrase". Meanwhile Gordon Brown hasn't had dinner with America's Ambassador to Britain since becoming Prime Minister.

Gordon Brown (who hasn't spoken regularly to George W Bush) prefers to work with EU allies rather than focus on the transatlantic relationship.

THE PHRASE "SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP" WAS COINED BY WS CHURCHILL - IN THE SAME SPEECH HE COINED THE PHRASE "IRON CURTAIN."

Excerpt:

Now, while still pursuing the method of realizing our overall strategic concept, I come to the crux of what I have traveled here to say. Neither the sure prevention of war, nor the continuous rise of world organization will be gained without what I have called the fraternal association of the English-speaking peoples.

This means a special relationship between the British Commonwealth and Empire and the United States.

This is no time for generalities, and I will venture to be precise.

Fraternal association requires not only the growing friendship and mutual understanding between our two vast but kindred systems of society, but the continuance of the intimate relationship between our military advisers, leading to common study of potential dangers, the similarity of weapons and manuals of instructions, and to the interchange of officers and cadets at technical colleges.

... We cannot be blind to the fact that the liberties enjoyed by individual citizens throughout the British Empire are not valid in a considerable number of countries, some of which are very powerful.

In these States control is enforced upon the common people by various kinds of all-embracing police governments. The power of the State is exercised without restraint, either by dictators or by compact oligarchies operating through a privileged party and a political police.

It is not our duty at this time when difficulties are so numerous to interfere forcibly in the internal affairs of countries which we have not conquered in war.

But we must never cease to proclaim in fearless tones the great principles of freedom and the rights of man which are the joint inheritance of the English-speaking world and which through Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the Habeas Corpus, trial by jury, and the English common law find their most famous expression in the American Declaration of Independence.

Brown and his leftist comrades in the Labour party are undoing this special relationship.

If they succeed it will have as disastrous a result as Neville Chamberlain's policies of appeasement. It will bring a loss of sovereignty to the EUSSR and and dhimmitude.

Thatcher and Blair understood what Brown doesn't.

Sadly, all of Great Britain will pay the price.