BRITISH PRIME minister Gordon Brown has said he and American president-elect Barack Obama “shared a dream” of tackling the world’s woes, and would do so together.
A week before Mr Obama’s inauguration, Mr Brown told the Sun newspaper: “President Obama shares the values of liberty, democracy and fairness. The special relationship will be one so strong no power on earth can ever drive us apart.”
Putting no limits on the potential reach and influence of that relationship, the prime minister continued: “There has never been a time that co-operation between the two countries and the rest of the world is more necessary. There have never been so many challenges that can only be met by two people working together.
“There are historic opportunities which exist over the next period of time to meet the big challenges . . . I look forward to meeting all those challenges with President Obama.”
A check on Mr Brown’s ambitions, meanwhile, came from the latest Populus poll, showing a reversal in Labour’s improving trend while once again giving David Cameron’s Conservatives a double-digit lead over the governing party. According to Populus, Tory support has risen by four points since early December to 43 per cent, with Labour down two points to 33 per cent and the Liberal Democrats, also down two points, trailing on 15 per cent.
With a significant gap between personal optimism and public pessimism over the state of the economy, moreover, the poll suggested that opinion could turn still more sharply against the government should the recession prove as deep or long as many experts predict.
That bad news for Mr Brown coincided with a chambers of commerce survey suggesting “a frightening deterioration” in the economy towards the end of 2008 and calls from business leaders for more radical measures to avoid a prolonged depression.
Following Monday’s £500 million (€550 million) package promising to put 500,000 people into work or training, the government yesterday announced that good teachers will be offered £10,000 in extra payments to encourage them to work in England’s toughest schools as part of the government’s drive to increase social mobility.
Mr Brown has also appointed former leading Blairite critic Alan Milburn to head a commission to ensure that professions such as medicine, the law, the civil service, armed forces and the media recruit more young people from poor backgrounds.
Meanwhile, Mr Brown and chancellor of the exchequer Alistair Darling are expected to confirm details of plans to guarantee up to £20 billion in loans to small businesses to help them survive the downturn.