British ambassador calls Obama ‘aloof’

A leaked briefing document about Barack Obama, composed for Gordon Brown by Britain's ambassador to Washington Sir Nigel Sheinwald (pictured), is unlikely to go down well with the Illinois senator. The Daily Telegraph, which runs the contents of the document as an exclusive today, is choc-a-bloc with “insights” on the would-be president, many of them not altogether positive: Obama can be "aloof", says Sheinwald, and has a tendency to dither when it comes to big issues.

The document, prepared for the PM ahead of Obama’s visit to Downing Street at the end of July, is marked as containing "sensitive judgments" and – fat chance - requests officials to "protect the contents carefully". Sheinwald says that the Democratic candidate for the White House is a "decidedly liberal" senator "who was finding his feet, and then got diverted by his presidential ambitions". Obama, he says, "can seem to sit on the fence, assiduously balancing pros and cons" and "does betray a highly educated and upper middle class mindset". Charges of elitism "are not entirely unfair", and he is "maybe aloof, insensitive" at times.

Sheinwald adds that the senator "can talk too dispassionately for a national campaign about issues which touch people personally, eg his notorious San Francisco comments about small-town Pennsylvanians clinging to guns and religion." (Continued below)

The seven-page letter warns the PM that he could initially find it difficult to deal with a President Obama because he remains a largely unknown quantity who "resists pigeon-holing". He also judges that his "policies are still evolving" and that if elected he will "have less of a track record than any recent president". However, Sheinwald says Obama's speeches are "elegant" and "mesmerising" and that he is "highly intelligent" and has "star quality".

Curiously, there is no mention of his wife Michelle - a central figure in his rise and his closest adviser - and little examination of his time in Chicago, where he had radical associations, or his background in Hawaii, essential to understanding why "Obama is cool", as the letter puts it. The British Embassy in Washington declined to comment on the leak.