Barack Obama and the PM speak screen-to-screen with regularity. So a visit to Washington is nowadays as much about show as about substance
Video conference calls are where the real business gets done these days between a US president and a British prime minister. The two leaders speak screen-to-screen with regularity. So a visit to Washington, like the one which David Cameron begins today, is nowadays as much about show as about substance. That's not to say there are no issues of substance to be worked through in the United States this week. With Afghanistan, Iran, Syria and the eurozone crisis all on the rolling agenda it could hardly be otherwise. And it's not to pretend that show isn't important in politics either, because it is. This visit is primarily about Mr Cameron cutting a figure on the Washington stage to impress his UK audience, and about Barack Obama getting the chance to host and toast an ever faithful ally in the White House in election year, especially after another tricky visit last week from Binyamin Netanyahu.
At first sight, this week may appear a familiar ritual. The resonant Churchillian references on which the two leaders fall back in their joint Washington Post article today are standard fare on such occasions. They have been deployed by all PMs and presidents for decades, irrespective of party. The entourages of senior ministers, business leaders and camera-candy UK celebs are par for the course these days too. All these things suggest that nothing much has changed in the UK-US relationship. There is certainly much continuity. Yet it cannot entirely disguise the fact that Mr Cameron is a different sort of visitor and Mr Obama a differently minded host to some of their predecessors — or that more epochal changes may lurk behind these differences too.
Both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown set great store by the wooing of America. Each had global aspirations; each sought to leverage the relationship in pursuit of them, whether in the cause of war, aid or economic stability. Each also believed that Washington visits and White House benedictions conferred a measure of imperial legitimacy on Labour, which earlier party leaders had lacked and from which the party's cause had suffered. Mr Blair's rapport with Bill Clinton and George Bush, and Mr Brown's attempt to acquire some of Mr Obama's stardust, all had a wider political purpose. Self-deceiving it may have been, and even destructive at times, but both Labour prime ministers saw themselves, not wholly falsely, as leaders who could provide a bridge between the US and Europe. Just as significantly, Washington saw it too — to an extent.
Mr Cameron's distinctive foreign policy project is harder to discern. That's partly because prime ministers from the party of Churchill tend to be more naturally at ease with the UK-US relationship than Labour PMs with something to prove. But Mr Cameron has not gone out of his way to pursue an overtly Atlanticist foreign policy, even in Libya and in spite of Liam Fox's urgings. Nor has Mr Cameron had the chance. Like Mr Bush before him, Mr Obama has been focused more on the Pacific than on the Atlantic. He thinks about China, India and Russia before he thinks about Europe. Yet Mr Cameron is not a pro-European either. If anything he is the reverse. So he is not travelling to Washington to offer himself as a bridge between America and Europe. He could hardly do that with any credibility, given the UK's self-imposed isolation from the EU.
It would be cheering to hope that Mr Cameron and his ministers would learn something in Washington that might make them stop and think about Britain's future in the world. Something about boosting demand and growth in the economy, for instance. Or something about the way that Washington, even now, needs a truly effective European defence partner in its dealing with Iran or Syria. But the ministers, mainly Liberal Democrats, who might make the case for growth or for Europe are not on this trip. A lot of nonsense — and some sense — is talked about the UK-US relationship. But relations can only be special when both sides have something special to share. Right now, it is hard to see what Mr Cameron has to offer in Washington except reminders of the past.