Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Difficulties with Allies

Britain of course tries very hard to ensure that her foreign friendships are genuine, smooth running and long lasting. But, alas, things don't always go to plan.

Friendship No. 1 - Saudi Arabia. Lovely to have King Abdullah here on a state visit of course. Slightly less lovely that he should presage his visit with public comments about how poor Britain is in waging the war on terror (in a BBC interview with John Simpson, just to make sure we all heard him right!). If only we were as good as Saudi Arabia in combatting Islamic extremism...

Friendship No. 2 - America (The US of). Won't hear a word against them of course, but having just watched the latest Spooks episode in which the USA seems to have become one of our major enemies, I'm not sure if this story, about Britain's only Muslim government minister being searched at US airports, doesn't suggest that fact occasionally catches up with fiction?

1 comment:

spin doctor said...

most would say that at the moment the only reason that we are entertaining the saudi king, apart from the vast oil reserves that they have, is because of the £4.2 billion eurofighter deal that we have with them, fingers pointed firmly at vince cable and the lib dems. However i feel that it is more simply a case of trying to keep one of the few allies that we stil have in the middle east, consdering that the rest are dropping around us like flies. so i wouldn't get too caught up in the hysteria that is surrounding the visit.
On the subject of our other friends once again i wouldn't worry about the two leaders relationship as the american incumbent is soon to be on his way out with the replacement most definitely being a democrat, who that will be is still to be decided.
So whilst many can umm and aah about how brown and bush get on i feel it would be more interesting watching the inevitable growing political relationship between the two democrat frontrunners and brown as this could show how the potential political climate and relationship between britian and america over the next few years, so to use the old cliche "watch this space".

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