Prime Minister's Questions, 4th March 2009

Above: is there no end to the parade of lickspittle lapdog politicians scurrying across the Atlantic whenever there is a power change in Washington?

I watched Prime Minister's Questions at lunchtime. The Prime Minister wasn't present, having gone to America for a thirty-minute meeting with the new American president. Leader of the House Harriet Harman took the Prime Minister's place, sitting on the front bench between David Milliband and Alistair Campbell.

The studio preamble predicted that Harriet Harman would be laughed at by all sections of the Commons for her recent public populist comments and not-so-public manouvring to replace Gordon Brown. With the Prime Minister away nothing serious would be said. I prepared to witness some knockabout silliness.

But the list of armed forces personnel killed over the last two weeks seemd unusually high, and when Opposition Deputy Leader William Hague led with a reference to the lack of objectives in Afghanistan I briefly thought an attempt would be made to hold the government to account for their chaotic and contradictory foreign policy. "They have given their lives" said William Hague, and I waited for him to tell us what they had given their lives for. When he failed to develop his question I found myself becoming angry, and the rest of Prime Minister's questions passed in a blur.

What are British armed forces doing in Afghanistan? What were/are (it is unclear whether we are in or out) British armed forces doing in Iraq? What exactly is the British Prime Minister doing in Washington?

Although I have many individual American friends, for a long time I have been ambivalent about "America" in a collective sense, and I do not regard the American government (whatever party) as a friend of the United Kingdom.

At best the two countries are allies with a broad spectrum of similar interests - but it goes no further than that.

There is no special relationship, there never has been a special relationship, there never will be.

There never will be because if a democracy is functioning properly a government is the servant of its people and must put their interests first, ahead of those of foreigners.

The Anglo-American "special relationship" amounts to no more than a special permission granted by British politicians for American presidents to use United Kingdom assets and interests as if they were their own (and increasingly this means the waste of young service men and women who are being killed pointlessly in Afghanistan while America manouvres itself into a position where it can claim "peace with honor, not peace with surrender" and scuttle off home).

This is not to condemn the American government. They are a foreign government pursuing their own national interests. But I do condemn British politicians for their self-interested addiction to American publicity and (shameful to say) American money.

It is no coincidence that the mega-lying creep Tony Blair and his Lady Macbeth wife were feted at The White House while Gordon Brown was allotted thirty minutes. Foreign leaders are bought and sold as a matter of course in Washington, and those who are not in favour are given short shrift. European politicians may be finessed with more skill, but their effective status seems to be little different to the third world despots openly paid-for by the CIA (again, this is not to condemn the American government - they are a foreign government pursuing their own national interests).

Which really raises the question: what do British politicians hope to achieve by their humiliating self-abasement to American presidents? Hints are made about access to "secrets" but it is entirely unclear whether these "secrets" are really worth knowing. Reference is made to availability of military technology, but Britain is not a poor country and presumably can afford to defend itself without relying on foreign assistance.

The main beneficiaries of the "special relationship" seem to be British politicians with over-inflated egos who get an opportunity to appear on the world stage and forget for a while that they represent a small country with limited power (and ironically British power and influence was diminished in large part as a result of American foreign policy post-1945).

Thirty minutes indeed! If that is the value they put on British friendship we should try them with a dose of British neutrality. Or even (I'm talking at a government to government level) British enmity.



Above: Tristram Hunt identified some weeks ago that Britain would be slighted by the incoming American government. The British alliance has become an embarrassment to the new American administration. What do they care if a few more old-world fogeys are killed in Afghanistan.