Three reasons why Obama would snub Brown

The Mole: It’s not just the Lockerbie cock-up. It doesn’t help that Brown is a man on his way out, says our Westminster insider

LAST UPDATED 8:01 AM, SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

Downing Street has been desperate to deny any snub by the White House, but the truth is that Gordon Brown's inability to get a one-on-one meeting with Barack Obama during his trip to New York and Pittsburgh is galling. As the BBC's Nick Robinson reports this morning, Brown's team were "frantic" at the weekend trying to set something up. Anything would do - if not a full-blown press conference, then a cup of tea and shortbread finger. But despite five requests, they failed.

There are at least three factors in play here. First, the special relationship is at a low ebb following the controversial release of the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and the subsequent jubilation in Tripoli on his return to freedom.

The White House actually admitted earlier this month that Obama had told Brown by phone that he disapproved of Megrahi's release. It is one thing for the President to feel unhappy about such a decision - quite another to put on record his displeasure with a fellow world leader.

Second, there's the simple of matter of how much time the host of a summit of 20 leading economies has available, and what his priorities should be. The Lockerbie cock-up aside, Britain still has a special place in America's affections - and we can expect more reassurances from the White House in the coming days that all is fine and dandy - but Obama has to think of the now and the future. The fact that he has made time for bilateral talks with the leaders of Japan, China and Russia says it all.

Finally, there's the little of matter of how much time his advisors would want the President to devote to a relationship with a man who has only months to go in the job - possibly weeks, if Charles Clarke has his way.

The sense of these being the dying days of Brown's premiership is palpable. He has had to face questions about his fitness in two interviews this week. He told NBC: "My sight is not at all deteriorating." And on Radio 5 Live he said: "I am healthy and I am very fit. I run a lot to keep fit and I will continue to keep fit."

On top of the health rumours, there are the rude noises coming from Clarke. The former Home Secretary told the Evening Standard on the eve of the Labour party conference that Brown has to go if Labour is not to face a decade or more in opposition. The PM's insistence on staying at the helm, said Clarke, risks letting "the whole Labour ship crash on to the rocks of May 2010 and sink for a very long time".

Also making life awkward for Brown yesterday was Stephen Hesford, the Labour MP for Wirral West who resigned as a parliamentary aide to Baroness Scotland in protest at the Attorney General's refusal to stand down after being fined £5,000 for employing an illegal immigrant. "We have to be seen to be accountable," said Hesford in his resignation letter.

And to think it was only on Tuesday that Gordon Brown was picking up his World Statesman of the Year award, hailed as a hero for "stabilising" the world economy and showing "compassionate leadership". How will he explain a week like this to his grandchildren?

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Excellent article that makes clear the symmetry in the decline of Gordon Brown and his continued inability to listen! At home opinion polls have clearly charted his decline in popularity since he became leader of the Labour Party and Prime Minister. Short-term bounces in the polls are inevitably followed by greater and greater declines. The same is happening on the international stage, a short-term bounce when he is given a bauble for being an international statesman but a very public decline where real power is involved when the President of the US does not want to meet him. Gordon Brown will not listen but the message is clear, at home and abroad he is simply not wanted!

Posted by Manny Goldstein at 8:31am on September 24, 2009

The reality is that this incompetent, blithering, blundering moron Brown would never have won any kind of election. He is hated as a warmongering imbecile by the huge majority of the British public. He'll bottle-out of an election as the Mr Nobody he's always been - a useless traitorous tosser in No 10.

Posted by Neil McGowan at 9:52am on September 24, 2009

What a load of rubbish.I go on a web site & Obama has enough problems with his own people over the health reforms.You lot might want the tories in power well heavem help you has the Tories will not.

Posted by Josie at 10:21am on September 24, 2009

He had a real chance to win his own mandate to govern after finally wresting the poison chalice brom Blaahhh's claws and bottled it. Since then it's been downhill at an ever increasing rate. All hail the Cameroons unless there is a sudden outbreak of rational thought among the electorate and they vote LibDem or whatever they're called this week. Both Tory & Labour have shown they have nothing to offer, vote Independent, Green or uncle Tom Cobley, they couldn't be worse.

Posted by allan kessing at 11:10am on September 24, 2009

Well hail to chief. Let Obama be unpopular in his own way, and Brown in his. I only pray (I am sure Brown and Obama don't pray together!) that Brown gets 100% of the blame both at the next election, and in history, for the shameless plundering of the economy and private pensions in the name of socialism, which this and the next generation will pay for dearly. Only getting out of the socialist trap known as the EU and getting back to running our own affairs with a properly free market government under Nigel Farage will save this country.

Posted by michael jose at 11:11am on September 24, 2009

USA invades countries and fights wars for oil (forget the democracy argument) and invites UK along to the fight for moral support. UK gives up a dying prisoner for a drop of oil and some business so Obama gets all sulky. Let's face it, USA has a great deal to learn about peaceful diplomacy and Obama could look to China for lessons on this front. On the other hand Brown and the UK should recognise our changing status on the world stage and act with some dignity. Above all remember we are European and even a sulky President under pressure at home can't ignore the EU.

Posted by nick at 11:15am on September 24, 2009

A rejection of Gordon Brown has nothing at all to do with wanting the Tories to be in power. It is possible to form an opinion and judge him on the decade he spent as Chancellor and the next few years as Prime Minister. This has nothing to do with the Tories and everything to do with his record while in office.

Posted by Manny Goldstein at 12:08pm on September 24, 2009

Gordon Brown was not even yesterdays man,go now and give us all a break.Time for a real change.

Posted by John Jolley at 2:49pm on September 24, 2009