TIMESONLINE: Gordon Brown’s Government took another tentative step to distance itself from President Bush yesterday, as one of the Prime Minister’s chief lieutenants delivered a series of coded criticisms of American foreign policy.
Douglas Alexander, the International Development Secretary, used a speech in Washington last night to rebuke what many in Labour’s ranks regard as Mr Bush’s unilateralist and high-handed approach. Mr Alexander said that a country’s might was “too often measured in what \ could destroy” and that “in the 21st century, strength should be measured by what we can build together”.
In an appeal for greater use of reformed multilateralist institutions such as the United Nations and the World Bank, he said: “Just as we need the rule of law at home to have civilisation, so we need rules abroad to ensure global civilisation.”
Much of Mr Alexander’s speech, the first made abroad by a Cabinet member since Tony Blair’s departure, was devoted to expressing admiration for the US. “There are few global challenges that do not require the active engagement of the United States,” he said, before calling on it to adopt new policies, alliances and priorities that “do not just protect us from the world — but reach out to the world”. Destructive power is no measure of a country's might, Britain tells US (more) By Tom Baldwin in Washington
THE TELEGRAPH:
Brown ally hints at new UK relations with US (more) By Graeme Wilson
Mark Alexander
