New Statesman & Society, leader 12 April 1996
The Labour leader's warm reception in the United States does not mean that the "special relationship" is due for a revival
This week, for the first time since Labour left government in 1979, a Labour leader is making an official visit to the United States in the expectation that it will be a rip-roaring success. Tony Blair has been preceded across the Atlantic by the sort of press coverage that politicians dream about – and the political class in Washington is dying to meet him.
Despite the Tories' crude attempts to smear him for "un-American activities", Blair can be sure that there will be no repeat of Neil Kinnock's humiliation in 1987. Then, the Labour leader, still an enthusiast for unilateral nuclear disarmament, was given a frosty 2o-minute audience by Ronald Reagan, who also famously mistook Denis Healey for the British ambassador. Blair, by contrast, can expect a warm reception from Bill Clinton.
The two men share the conviction that they have rescued political parties that appeared to have gone into terminal decline (although Blair has yet to win power) – and Clinton sees Blair as something of a political protégé who has taken up many of his own themes, particularly on crime, tax and economic policy. The defence and security policy stances that caused Reagan to shun Kinnock nine years ago are now ancient history. These days, Labour is an impeccably Atlanticist party, its antipathy to nuclear weapons and its criticisms of Nato and US foreign policy long forgotten. Clinton even shares Blair's antipathy to John Major: he has not forgiven the Tories for backing George Bush in 1992 and helping the Republicans dig for dirt on his days as a student in Oxford.
All of which makes for a good photo-opportunity for both men – but what does the razzmattazz mean in the long term? It certainly makes it difficult for the Tories to claim in the run-up to the election that Labour is somehow disloyal to the Atlantic alliance (which, as we all know, has preserved the peace for nearly 50 years). And it probably presages warmer relations between Britain and the US if Clinton is re-elected and Blair makes it to Number Ten.
But that's about it. What it doesn 't mean is that a return to the "special relationship" between Britain and America is on the cards, at least as the "special relationship" has normally been construed. Of course, Britain and the US will continue to share the English language, and the cross-fertilisation of cultures that has marked the past 200 years will go on as before (with America inevitably having far more influence here than Britain has there). Britain will be reliant on the US to remain a nuclear weapons power, just as it has been since the early 1960s; and the links between the two countries' intelligence services will still be close. As long as Britain stays a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and retains substantial military capabilities, it will be a key ally of the world's only superpower.
But none of this is particularly "special". The fact is that, with the end of the cold war, Britain's role as America's favoured partner in western Europe no longer makes much sense to US policy-makers. During the cold war, the French were too independent for Washington's liking and the Germans too prone to neutralism. Britain, by contrast, under both Tory and Labour governments, could be relied upon to back the US on every key policy decision. When the Americans said "Jump!", we jumped, in other words, and in return felt mightily pleased to be patted on the head.
Today, however, the value of such unquestioning loyalty is much reduced – and, with Tory Britain a bit-player in the process of European integration and Germany increasingly dominant in Europe both economically and politically, Washington has looked more and more to Bonn as its most important European ally. That is unlikely to change even if Labour wins.
The upshot, as Blair himself has recognised, is that the best way for Britain to develop its relations with the US is as part of Europe. Crucial as the Atlantic alliance is, it is with the countries the other side of the Channel and the North Sea that a Labour government will have to work most closely. However much the photographs of this week's trip remind everyone of the young Harold Wilson's visit to see the young John Kennedy in 1963, the world today is a very different place – like it or not.
