It rather outscores Miliband’s dinner with the Clooneys
watches the President’s warmest of welcomes for his ‘bro’ Dave...
DAVID Cameron arrived in a chilly but welcoming Washington yesterday afternoon – only to find that Labour’s Ed Balls was already in the city, preaching to American political insiders about the ‘squeezed middle’ and ‘the forces of reaction’ on the Right of British politics.
To travel across the Atlantic to find that maddening man Balls already there? Aaargh! Shades of Scott being beaten to the Antarctic by Amundsen.
But Mr Cameron is being given bestbuddy treatment by President Barack Obama on this two- day visit to the American capital and it gives him some useful top-division schmoozing opportunities less than four months before the General Election.
DC in DC! Within an hour or so of arrival he chalked up several useful encounters: Federal Reserve boss Janet Yellen (perhaps the most important money person in the world), IMF supremo and Arsene Wenger lookalike Christine Lagarde, US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, and owlish former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. And then the big top trump of the lot, the US president. On the whole, it rather outscores Ed Miliband’s recent dinner date with Mr and Mrs George Clooney.
Word here is that Mr Obama would be far from distressed if Mr Cameron – whom the president allegedly addresses as ‘bro’ – won the election in May. Mr Obama’s admiration for Mr Miliband is, ahem, a work in progress. Or as a Washington lobbyist told me on Wednesday night: ‘The White House thinks the guy is a total doofus’.
Mr Obama was unimpressed by the Labour leader’s pencil-sucking over US-British military action against Syria in 2013, among other things. That may explain why the president yesterday stretched diplomatic convention and went out of his way to big up Mr Cameron’s economic policies in a joint newspaper article which used the slightly rusty phrase ‘the special relationship’.
Is Mr Obama interfering in British politics by being so generous to Mr Cameron? No more so, perhaps, than Mr Cameron was interfering in US politics when he gave Mr Obama similar support just before his re-election in 2012. This trip may be payback for the help Cameron gave then.
MR Cameron had a ‘ working dinner’ with Mr Obama last night when the chief topic of conversation was, er, ebola. That can’t have done much for their appetites.
After dinner, a jet-lagged Mr Cameron retired to the presidential guest house, the interestingly named Blair House. To be stabled at Blair House, just across the street from the White House, is a signal honour generally reserved for heads of state such as the Queen and Nelson Mandela, or acclaimed friends of America such as Margaret Thatcher and Ariel Sharon.
Mere visiting prime ministers often have to slum it at their embassy or at a hotel. (Just for the record, Blair House is named after a 19th century newspaper publisher, Francis Preston Blair, who was close to presidents Jackson, Van Buren and Lincoln. Nothing to do with the dreaded Tony.)
Today Messrs Cameron and Obama will have meetings about cyber warfare, data privacy and terrorism, not least last week’s Paris killings and the more recent atrocities in Nigeria. Mr Obama has been criticised for not sending a top figure to Paris for last weekend’s anti-terrorism march. The Cameron visit gives him a chance to recover some lost ground on that issue by affirming Western values alongside a European leader.
Mr Cameron is pressing Mr Obama for the release from Guantanamo Bay prison of Shaker Aamer, a Saudi Arabian with British connections. Far from resenting this pressure from their visitor, the Obama camp is grateful for the intervention. The president himself has stated a desire to close the Guantanamo Bay camp in Cuba but he has been prevented from doing so by Republican opponents who only this week have been complaining that releasing Guantanamo inmates would imperil American security. Mr Cameron is thus an ally for Mr Obama in his fight with congressional rightwingers.
Soon after landing at Dulles airport (supper time in Britain, mid-afternoon in Washington), Mr Cameron showed his priorities by zooming straight off to a round of television interviews. As for Mr Balls, he was launching a report on ‘inclusive prosperity’ with various international Lefties. Scintillating was not quite the word but Mr Balls was on chirpy form. His report, by the way, suggests that there should be more Western immigration. I wonder what Mr Miliband will make of that.