George and Gordon Will No Longer Be “Joined at the Hip”, Says Lord Malloch Brown

Photo of Lord Malloch Brown courtesy of The Telegraph

THE TELEGRAPH: Britain's "special relationship" with the United States is under fresh strain today after Lord Malloch Brown, the Foreign Office minister, said that Gordon Brown and President George W Bush would no longer "be joined at the hip".

Interviewed in The Daily Telegraph, Lord Malloch Brown said that it was time for a more "impartial" foreign policy, building new relationships with the French president Nicolas Sarkozy and the German chancellor Angela Merkel as well as the growing economic powerhouses of India and China.

He said: "It is very unlikely that the Brown-Bush relationship is going to go through the baptism of fire and therefore be joined together at the hip like the Blair-Bush relationship was.

"That was a relationship born of being war leaders together. There was an emotional intensity of being war leaders with much of the world against them. That is enough to put you on your knees and get you praying together." Brown's new man strains links with Bush (more) By Alice Thomson and Rachel Sylvester

TIMESONLINE:
Cabinet is ordered to toe the line on US By Philip Webster and Tom Baldwin

Mark Alexander