Meet Britain's New Prime Minister

Next week Britain will get a new prime minister. The man who takes over will be perhaps the most knowledgeably pro-American politician to enter Downing Street since Winston Churchill. He is steeped in American history and has long been a profound admirer of the world's only superpower. While anti-American sentiment has exploded around the world in the last five years, he has been a steadfast defender of the U.S. model. He prides himself on his close ties with America's leaders and has consciously tried to emulate much of what the U.S. has done in public policy in the last decade.

Surely some mistake, I hear you saying. It's the man that's leaving Downing Street, Tony Blair, who is America's staunchest ally, isn't it? The prime minister who has been so pro-American that his own Labor Party forced him out in the aftermath of Iraq, and whose close relationship with George Bush has earned him the derision of his countrymen?

But, no, you heard me correctly the first time.

Mr. Blair is leaving, but Gordon Brown, his number two for the last ten years, is finally taking over, and he wants you to know he thinks America is just great.

Mr. Brown's credentials as an ally of the U.S. are unimpeachable.

He can talk with great understanding of the benefits of America's capitalist economic system. As Chancellor of the Exchequer - Treasury Secretary in effect -- for the last 10 years, he has worked hard to align himself with the pro-free-enterprise crowd in Washington, not the social democrats, tax and spenders in Brussels. He is a fan and close friend of the Ayn Rand-loving libertarian-conservative Alan Greenspan - and even arranged for the Queen to give the former Federal Reserve chairman an honorary knighthood. He gets on well with Henry Paulson, the mega-rich investment banker who now heads the Treasury Department. He has surrounded himself with advisers who have spent time studying in the U.S., two of whom - Ed Balls and Ed Miliband - are expected to be appointed to senior positions in his government next week.

He backed the war in Iraq, and speaks of the need to combat terrorism in much the same tones as Mr. Blair or Mr. Bush.

Why then, do people keep thinking that the new man will pull Britain away from America?

Partly it is because Mr. Brown is not his predecessor. Mr. Blair didn't come into office with particularly strong pro-U.S. credentials (certainly not like Mr. Brown) but he quickly became a firm and reliable ally.

Mr. Brown couldn't, even if he wanted to, emulate the warm relationship Mr. Blair has had with both Bill Clinton and George Bush; he is bound, temperamentally and politically, to be cooler.

Partly it is because some people don't really trust Mr. Brown. He talks a good game about America, some say, but listen carefully and note he's an old-fashioned lefty; his Scottish socialist background updated and upgraded for American purposes into a full-throated liberalism.

His closest friends are people like Bob Shrum, the liberal, eight-time losing Democratic presidential adviser, at whose house on Cape Cod Mr. Brown has spent many a summer's day. His real intellectual roots in America lie somewhere beneath Harvard Yard.

The America Gordon Brown knows and loves, in other words, stretches all the way from the Cape to Cambridge, Mass.

But mainly it is because it is generally assumed that Mr. Brown will, for good domestic political reasons, be forced to distance himself from the U.S. His Labor Party is in serious trouble, thanks in large part to Iraq. The once moribund Conservative Party has revived and looks once again like a credible challenger. Mr. Bown will struggle to win a charisma battle against its leader, David Cameron. With Labor's left seething at the mess the party finds itself in because of the Bush-Blair embrace, Mr. Brown, will have to put an ocean between himself and Washington.

But will he?

He has given mixed signals so far. In truth, as he prepares to take office, his general approach to governing is so secretive that no one can say with confidence what he will do.

Back in April in Washington he met briefly with President Bush, in a "drop-by" in the office of Stephen Hadley, the national security adviser. The slightly cloak-and-dagger nature of the meeting seemed to reflect Mr. Brown's ambivalence towards the Bush administration - he wanted to be in on the counsels of the White House, but he didn't want people to see him consorting with the despised U.S. president.

At that time there was talk on Labor's left that Mr. Brown was preparing some bold gesture for his first few weeks in No. 10 that might involve declaring a clear breach with the U.S. Some dreamed that the new prime minister would "do a Zapatero", and emulate the Spanish socialist prime minister who took office after conservative Jose Maria Aznar in March 2004, and pull his country's troops out of Iraq.

But the word from the Brown camp in the last week is that no such plot is being hatched. For three reasons in fact it looks likely that the new prime minister will hold Britain's course with regard to the U.S. It may lack in spirit Mr. Blair's enthusiastic commitment to the war on terror, but in practice it will keep not change much.

First, they know the tide of debate on Iraq has already shifted inexorably towards U.S. disengagement. They listen to the discussions in congress and hear that, come September, the Bush administration, by will or by force, will begin the process of serious withdrawal. If the Americans are getting ready to downshift, why risk a breach with them over the war?

They know too that Mr. Bush is on his way out. Whatever he thinks of the president, in 18 months Mr. Brown will still be prime minister when new ownership takes over the White House. Unless Dick Cheney - or Lord Voldemort - throws his hat in the ring, it is inconceivable that the new president will be more unpopular in Britain than the current one, whoever he, or she, is. A good relationship with Washington ought to be possible, but it could be jeopardized if the incoming administration thinks Mr. Brown has cynically manipulated anti-American sentiment for short-term political gain.

Third is the Sarkozy factor. The sudden arrival of a pro-American president in France is a challenge for Britain and Mr. Brown. If the new French leader proves to be serious in his quest for better relations with Washington, the British prime minister will not want to risk being outflanked as America's big ally in Europe, especially with Angela Merkel plowing a cautiously Atlanticist furrow in Germany.

There will be changes - in tone and substance. For one, Mr. Brown will be much less involved in foreign policy than Mr. Blair was - he believes the next election in the U.K., probably in 2009, will be fought on more domestic territory. So the new PM will rely more on an active foreign secretary than Mr. Blair did to set the tone of U.K. policy. Mr. Brown will announce his new team, including that post, next week.

Also, expect to hear much more from the new prime minister about the importance of winning the "battle for hearts and minds" in the war on terrorism. He believes the war will be won in the end in the same way the Cold War was won - less by military intervention and more by leadership and demonstration of the moral superiority of the West's way of life. He may face an early challenge on that in the question of how to confront Iran - but don't be surprised if, just as Mr. Blair did, he sticks close to a tough U.S. position on Iranian nuclear weapons.

Gone forever will be the pyrotechnic quality of Mr. Blair's leadership - the brilliant oratory, the impassioned defense of America's cause in the world, the quasi-religious themes that underlay the Blair foreign policy.

Instead, Britain is about to get a leader who will present a quieter, less ideological, more pragmatic approach to America and the world. It will sound rather different, but may not in practice look all that new.