Downing Street Says » UK/US Relations

» Friday, July 13, 2007

UK/US Relations

Asked what the Government reaction would be if a junior member of President Bush’s Government visited the UK and started dictating foreign policy, the PMS said he did not think anybody was telling anybody how to run their foreign policy. The PMS thought the interpretation that was put on Douglas Alexander’s words this morning was extraordinary. This was not the interpretation that the PMS would have put on the speech when he read it. As the Prime Minister made clear this morning, he thought that we needed to have a very strong relationship between Britain and the United States and between a British Prime Minister and US President. What he would not do was allow people to separate the United Kingdom from the US in dealing with the common challenges we face around the world.

Asked whether the Prime Minister thought the US should reach out more to the rest of the world, the PMS said journalists should refer back to what the Prime Minister said in an interview this morning on the importance of the strength of the relationship with the US. We had been working and will continue to work very closely with the US on number of common challenges that we faced around the world, for example Kosovo, Iran, Darfur and the reconstruction of Iraq. The Government was working very closely with the US, and the US was working very closely with its other international colleagues and that would continue.

Asked repeatedly what interpretations the PMS did not recognise in the speech, the PMS said it was for journalists to put whatever interpretation they wanted on the speech, but the interpretation he had was that it was a fairly straightforward speech saying development had an important role to play in foreign policy. This was not a particularly startling new insight, nor anything one would have expected to be any different from either this Prime Minister or the previous Prime Minister or for that matter, the President of the US.

Asked whether the PMS had read the speech before it was delivered, the PMS said he was not going to get into the details of when exactly he had read what.

Asked repeatedly whether the Prime Minister was aware of the content of the speech and did he approve of it, the PMS said there was no difficulty with the content of the speech, what we had difficulty with was the interpretation that had been put on it. What was being said about our relationship with the US was nonsense.

Put that Douglas Alexander had said the US should not act destructively in the 21st century, the PMS said he did not say this. He had made a very general statement about the importance of development in the 21st Century. We had been working very closely in with the US on issues around development. For example the Prime Minister, when he was Chancellor, worked very closely with a number of US Treasury secretaries on issues around debt relief, we had been working very closely in making progress towards multilateral development goals, securing more funding for the Gleneagles agreement and so on.

Asked whether the Prime Minister did not think it was reasonable there would be implications about a speech given by a British Cabinet Minister in Washington about global policy, to be interpreted as having implications in terms of the US/UK relationship, the PMS said journalists would always interpret things. However, the PMS’s job was to tell journalists this: they should not interpret this speech as sending any particular signal to the US. The Prime Minister as Chancellor had delivered many such speeches in Washington and other foreign capitals over years on similar themes, as did the previous Prime Minister.

The PMS read out the Prime Minister’s quote from the Radio 5 interview:

"I think people have got to remember the relationship between Britain and America and between a British Prime Minster and an American President is built on the things that we shared; the same enduring values about the importance of liberty, opportunity, the dignity of the individual and I will continue to work, as Tony Blair did, very closely with the American administration".

Asked whether there had been any contact with between the Prime Minster and the President since he became Prime Minister, the PMS said the Prime Minister and the President had spoken on three occasions, since he became Prime Minister. This included a lengthy videoconference, earlier this week.

Asked whether journalists should expect a statement from Douglas Alexander, the PMS said Douglas Alexander, was reported on having said in the preamble to his speech:

"The Prime Minister made clear the strong relationship with the US was a fundamental basis of foreign policy". He went on to say "he hoped his speech was entirely consistent with this approach and he looked forward to working with the US".

Briefing took place at 9:00 | Search for related news

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» Friday, July 13, 2007

UK/US Relations

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