Penny Mordaunt MP draws on her American experience to ask if the Special Relationship has been damaged by the vote on Syria
The short and obvious answer is ‘no’. The relationship enjoyed by Britain and America is not between a president and a prime minister, or a congress and a parliament, but between two peoples. Certainly the course of that relationship is eased when there is personal and political accord between the nations’ leaders, but it is not contingent on the avoidance of any divergence in policy. Ed Miliband was right about that, but I suspect that I am right to think that the President, members of Congress and any of the presidential aspirants will be as able to recognise political chicanery when they see it as we are here.
The Leader of the Opposition was afforded every courtesy to allow Parliament to come to a consensus on Syria; the Prime Minister was happy to accede to his request for an explicit clause on the necessity of a second vote on military action and yet still Miliband decided to table an amendment. One can only conclude that he desperately wanted to create a division, to appear to be the voice of reason and caution – to provide what he has been wont to call a ‘calm and measured response’. Unfortunately, Mr Miliband’s public utterances since the vote could only be considered as ‘calm and measured’ in so far has he has spoken very slowly. One might imagine that his private remarks have been rather more fraught with anxiety, for his own ‘sequential roadmap’ is in tatters. Miliband and a majority of his MPs wanted a second vote, but because they failed to support the Government’s motion there will not be one. SomeMPs’ votes against the Government were influenced by conscience; Miliband’s was moved by calculation. The only cross-Atlantic damage which has been inflicted is on the Labour leader’s own prime ministerial credentials, such as they are. There have always been people who thought Ed Miliband not up to the job of Prime Minister, it was just not apparent until recently that Ed Miliband was one of them.
The Prime Minister’s decision to put his case to the House of Commons has had a positive influence in Washington, President Obama feeling obliged to follow suit. Just as I found when I worked on the first Bush campaign, notice is being taken of the arguments made in our Parliament and the opinions of the British people, both by Congress and the American people. Yet had the motion been passed our influence would have been all the greater. Instead of a vote besmirched by low political cunning, we would have sent a cautious but resolute message of our preparedness to act, but not precipitately and only after the UN report and a second vote. At the time of writing, the votes in Congress are yet to come and there is great uncertainty about their outcomes, especially as they have been postponed in light of discussions on international supervision of Syrian chemical weapons, discussions which have been prompted by the possibility of military action. Yet whatever the final outcome, there is no uncertainty that Britain and the US will work closely together to tackle that which follows.
Beyond the immediate circumstances of our position on Syria, the future alliance of Great Britain and the United States is assured. We should not fear the so-called ‘reorientation’ of US focus to the Pacific, for we look to the four corners of the world ourselves, and while we will exploit our Commonwealth and other unique relationships, we never think that this turns us away from America. Indeed, Britain and America are committed to work together on nuclear deterrence and our carrier strike regeneration will be facilitated by training our pilots with the US forces. Most importantly, there is no appetite to devalue or undermine a relationship which is so emphatically in our mutual best interests.
