Does Brown's holiday destination matter?

Oliver Kamm is writing for the New Republic, and one of his early contributions is a first class piece of analysis concerning Gordon Brown's likely foreign policy.

However, it contains this statement in its second paragraph:

Commentators have little option but to cite--and most do--Brown's penchant for taking holidays in Cape Cod as a sign of his Atlanticism. What began as a journalistic non sequitur has now become also a cliché.

I like to claim that I am one of those who packed this non sequiter off on its travels and sent it on its way to its new exalted status.

I fear that Oliver is something he rarely is - wrong.

Gordon Brown tries all he can to avoid spending even one night in another European state. He dislikes the food, for one thing. But he seizes every opportunity to visit America, whether for work or on vacation.

He loves the United States. He reads as many of the important political books published there as he can get his hands on. And he never varies his holiday plans.

To say that this near obsession with the US will have no impact on his foreign policy is to believe that emotional ties are irrelevant in politics. And that simply isn't the case.

Brown's holiday destination is not the Rosetta Stone. But his emotional preference for the US over Europe is among the most important things of what little we know about his attitude to world affairs.

Comments

[Paul Burgess]

Mr. Brown is wise. Britain's future rests with us, your cousins, flawed and silly as we sometimes are. The English Channel is culturally and politically wider than the Atlantic. The continent is filled with cozy, obsolete states that lack the political will even to defend themselves, never mind be effective on the world stage. Look west. Here is where your true friends are. Here is where our future together is.

[Mike Clare]

"Here is where your true friends are. Here is where our future together is." (sic)

Or, rather, the deadly embrace.