In his first speech after the election, David Cameron stood alongside a portrait of Winston Churchill. The monumental presence of Britain’s wartime Prime Minister did not go unnoticed by pro-British observers on the other side of the Atlantic.
Some in the US have hailed the election as an opportunity for Barack Obama to refurbish the frayed “special relationship” — the phrase coined by Churchill more than 60 years ago. “President Obama, who appeared to hold Gordon Brown at arm’s length, should make an effort to forge a closer relationship with whoever emerges as prime minister,” an editorial in The Washington Post suggested.
This seems exceptionally unlikely. The special relationship has become progressively more ordinary in recent years; under a new British prime minister there is an opportunity for it to become more straightforward, more honest and, with luck and good judgment, more useful and pragmatic.
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