Gordon Brown is succeeding with his first great spin campaign, appearing to distance himself from the aggressive policies of his predecessor while at the same time escalating his two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
YouGov found in early August that 73% of respondents think the new prime minister is not as close to US president George W. Bush as Tony Blair was, and 57% think Brown has got the relationship with the US “about right”.
At the same time, according to the Sunday Telegraph, Gordon Brown, prime minister since 27 June, ordered the RAF to drop more bombs on Iraq in four weeks than in the whole of the previous three years.
Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, according to the Observer, “British troops have called in US air strikes hundreds of times in recent months.”