SIXTEEN
March 2012
‘It’s amazing to think they are doing this for us,’ says George Osborne to Craig Oliver, as they stand on the South Lawn of the White House. In the marquee, Mumford & Sons are playing. Obama’s team are bending over backwards to tell the world that David Cameron is their friend, and that they are giving him the biggest party for an overseas leader of Obama’s first administration.
The White House indeed are falling over themselves to play up the importance of the prime minister. During Cameron’s first five years as prime minister, a senior White House aide says, he and Obama ‘have agreed on virtually every single issue of importance to the US’. ‘David Cameron is the first person the president wants to talk to on any issue. Look at Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Iran, Pakistan, Egypt or the eurozone crisis, and there is no significant difference between them.’ The White House is eager to provide visible evidence to show the closeness of their man to Cameron. Between 2010 and April 2014, they meet twenty-two times, and have forty-seven phone calls or video teleconferences. ‘The UK is our number one collaborator.’
Number 10 didn’t always see the relationship in such roseate hues. Obama’s businesslike tone can give the impression of a lack of warmth and collegiality. If Cameron comes up with a good idea, Obama might say ‘We’ve already thought of that’, or ‘We will come back to you on it’. The White House, in contrast, makes much of the ‘instinctive understanding’ between two senior leaders: ‘No one who hasn’t held that burden can possibly understand it: it’s a complicity that exists between those who hold ultimate power in their countries.’ They point out that both Obama and Cameron regard themselves as husbands and fathers first, and president and prime minister second, that they share a pragmatic rather than doctrinaire approach to politics, a sense of fun, high intelligence and rationality. But even Cameron can find Obama too rational and considered. Obama’s love of the emotionless, logical Star Trek character Dr Spock is well known, and there is certainly more than a passing resemblance between the president and his childhood hero, so much so that his nickname at the Foreign Office had been Spock for many years.1 Cameron may well be Obama’s closest overseas ally amongst world leaders, but personal friendships are not Obama’s forte. The president is not close personally to any of the Chinese or Indian leaders, he doesn’t like Netanyahu of Israel, he fell out with Erdogan of Turkey, and he never developed a close relationship with Hollande in France. Merkel is important to him on certain issues, notably Ukraine and Russia. But again they are not close personally. There is not the warmth between Cameron and Obama that existed between Thatcher and Reagan, Major and George Bush, and Blair with both Clinton and George W. Bush.
When Obama comes to Britain on 23–25 May 2011 for his first state visit it is a major staging post in their relationship. White House expectations are not very high, but they agree to the visit as a legacy issue to redress the way the British media portrayed Obama’s relationship with Gordon Brown, which gave the impression of the prime minister being snubbed. They are very anxious to avoid the relationship with Cameron going down the same route. They thus determine to give the Brits some serious time as a sign to show how much the relationship means to them. Obama’s visit is part of a four-nation European tour, including Ireland, France and Poland. Michelle accompanies her husband throughout. As it is a state visit, they stay with his fellow head of state, the Queen, in Buckingham Palace.
Great thought has gone into the schedule. The Obamas meet the newly married Prince William and Kate, go to the Globe Academy school in London where they play table tennis with students, and attend the mandatory white tie banquet at Buckingham Palace, where guests include film stars Kevin Spacey and Helena Bonham Carter. On the final day, Obama attends a Cabinet meeting, followed by a barbeque for servicemen in the Number 10 garden where he and Cameron dispense burgers while wearing white shirts and ties. Obama is intrigued by Number 10: he is eager to see the Camerons’ flat.
The political centrepiece is the speech Obama gives in Westminster Hall to both Houses of Parliament, in which he lays stress on the United States and Britain relying on each other, and the world relying on both of them. He deftly touches on an issue which is widely thought to have been responsible for a certain coolness towards Britain when he first became president: ‘it is possible for hearts to change and old hatreds to pass … it is possible for the sons and daughters of former colonies to sit here as members of this great Parliament, and for the grandson of a Kenyan who served as a cook in the British army to stand before you as the president of the United States’.2
The White House team are pleasantly surprised by how well the visit goes. Michelle is especially taken with the Queen, and both Obamas delight in the pageantry and ceremonials. Like all US presidents, Obama realises that ‘once you are in the UK, it is like being in a safe harbour, a feeling that you don’t get in any other country: it is partly about the shared language, history and culture’, a top White House aide says. ‘The trip generated tremendous goodwill.’ The Obama trip comes at a difficult period for Cameron, and its palpable success vindicates his strategy of not being seen to be overly reliant on transatlantic approbation. The idea crystallises that a return visit in the spring of 2012 would be ideal, with Obama facing re-election that year. Number 10 is absolutely delighted to accept.
After much diary juggling, 13–15 March 2012 is fixed as the date for Cameron’s return trip. Obama has grown much more comfortable with Cameron, and the relationship with Britain generally. He is looking forward to Cameron’s visit. A difference of opinion on tackling the economy is the only cloud on the horizon. Osborne’s inclusion in the party is in part to reassure commentators that there are no fundamental differences over economic policy, though clearly there are. But he is also keen not to miss out on the fun.
Cameron flies out by British Airways with Samantha, landing at Andrews Field air force base on 13 March to a full military reception. The mood in the front of the plane is euphoric. ‘We had got through Leveson and we were checking ourselves for contact wounds, realising that none of us were bleeding, and here we are, on this amazing visit,’ says one person on the flight. But one member of the large PM party is far from happy: Samantha. ‘It is unusual for her to go, she is very nervous because she is not a natural lover of the limelight, and particularly hates the moment when the plane door opens and all the cameras start clicking.’ Various figures on the plane reassure her. On arrival, they are whisked to Blair House, the white-painted building built in 1824 just opposite the White House reserved for prestigious visitors. They are greeted by assistant chief of protocol, Randy Bumgardner (the Guardian reports that Cameron just manages to contain his mirth).3 Generating good publicity and images is everything. Obama has a surprise in store. Later that day, Cameron flies on Marine One back to Andrews, and then by Air Force One to Dayton, Ohio for a basketball game. The White House say they want him to see the interior of the US rather than just the coastal cities overseas leaders normally visit.
During the flight, Cameron disappears up to the front of the plane into the president’s private office where they talk alone. As the Americans hoped, he is excited and duly impressed by being on the famous plane. Of Cameron’s first five years in office, 2012 is the quietest of them on the world stage, although the Middle East as ever is still a major source of concern. They discuss whether Netanyahu will launch an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities during the window between June and September, when the Israelis will calculate that Obama is least likely to stop them because of the US elections. Advice from British officials is that Netanyahu might not risk an attack, not least because of domestic pressures from within his country.
For Cameron, the basketball game is largely an irrelevance, but ‘for Obama, bringing in the Conservative British prime minister to Ohio – a swing state – flaunts his foreign policy credentials and underlines how he’s improved America’s image abroad,’ reports the press.4 On the British side, Craig Oliver makes the most of Cameron being the first world leader to fly on board Air Force One: the BBC’s Nick Robinson rates it even higher in PR terms than both leaders flipping burgers at the Downing Street barbeque the year before.5 On the flight back to Washington, Obama even allows the jet-lagged Cameron to curl up in the hallowed presidential bed.6
Wednesday 14 March sees the principal events in Washington. Obama’s team are relieved that the British will not be holding talks with any Republican challengers on the visit. The day opens with a nineteen-gun salute echoing around the south lawn with the British national anthem being played. Obama makes a play of it being almost exactly 200 years since the British had come to Washington and burnt down the White House in August 1814: ‘The relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom is the strongest that it has ever been,’ he says at the press conference.
‘The Americans gave the PM the kind of reception normally reserved for a head of state,’ said new British ambassador to the US Peter Westmacott. The atmospherics are helped by the good weather, the roses and magnolia being in bloom, and the Marine Band creating a sense of occasion.7 The words spoken are all very warm. At the state dinner in a marquee on the White House garden, the theme is ‘America’s backyard’: guests include Richard Branson, George Clooney and Damian Lewis, star of the hit television series, Homeland. ‘I’ve learnt something about David Cameron,’ Obama says in his after-dinner speech. ‘He is just the kind of partner that you want on your side. I trust him. He says what he does, and he does what he says.’ ‘There are three things about Barack that really stand out for me,’ replies Cameron. ‘Strength, moral authority and wisdom.’8
It clearly means much to Cameron that he and Obama spend so much time together. Number 10 estimates they have an unprecedented nine hours together on the trip. In the private flat in the White House, they discuss their families, which is a genuine shared and real bond. In formal talks, they agree that they cannot do much more to intervene in the upheavals in the Middle East and North Africa, or in Syria, where President Assad has been killing large numbers of his people. The president praises Cameron for his work in bringing the international community and aid to supporting progress in Somalia, but they barely touch on the economy. Osborne attends a dinner at the British Embassy, at which he meets his opposite numbers, and where he plays down any differences in approach. Osborne flies home that night a very contented man.
The next day, Cameron flies to New York, where he meets Mayor Bloomberg and visits Ground Zero. Samantha had been visiting New York on 11 September 2001: Cameron had tried frantically to speak to her, but could not do so because the telephone networks were down. At Ground Zero, they pay tribute to those killed in the attacks. Oliver peels off from the prime minister’s party to see a broadcasting friend at NBC. He has only eight dollars in his pocket, not enough for a cab, but a rickshaw driver says he will take him across town for that money. As he is pedalled through Times Square, he thinks ‘what an extraordinary few days this has been, and we are even ahead of Labour’. The trip has indeed been a spectacular success. The PM’s party are on the first high for many months.
Oliver’s mobile rings. ‘Are you going to cut the 50p rate in the Budget?’ he is asked. He has to think very quickly. Unless he denies such a direct question, the media will know that it is true, yet he tries to brush the caller off. ‘This was precisely the time when we needed to be hammering things through on the Budget, when important things come to your attention and the Treasury tries all kinds of things on. It was incredibly unwise for Osborne to go on the trip to America,’ says Clegg’s chief of staff, Jonny Oates.9 Osborne had been in regular touch with the office from the US, but his disappearance at such a critical time did not look good. ‘What the fuck is he doing in America? The Budget is days away,’ one of the press team had said. ‘Don’t worry: it’s all fine, it’s all sorted,’ Osborne’s senior aide Rupert Harrison had replied, trying to reassure them.
Cameron flies back that night from New York’s JFK airport. Oliver discusses the phone call with him on the plane while still on the ground. There appear to have been two separate briefings, one to the Financial Times that the top rate of income tax would be cut to 45p, another to the Guardian that it would go down to 40p. They suspect that the Lib Dems are responsible. Before the plane takes off, Cameron speaks to Osborne. ‘Let’s not add any energy to the story,’ the chancellor says. But the matter is already out of their hands.