Usa

Over on Foreign Policy magazine, Andrew J Bacevich and I are going at each other. Topic: the nature of the transatlantic relationship. In the slipstream of US Defence Secretary Robert Gates’ lament about Europeans’ pacifist leanings, Professor Bacevich wrote a delightfully provocative piece arguing the US should leave NATO: "If NATO has a future, it will find that future back where the alliance began: in Europe. NATO's founding mission of guaranteeing the security of European democracies has lost none of its relevance. Although the Soviet threat has vanished, Russia remains. And Russia, even if no longer a military superpower, does not exactly qualify as a status quo country.

Out of the conference hall, and back on to the campaign trail, it would nice to see the Tories talking about the things which make them ready for government.  In particular, William Hague should make a foreign policy speech setting out what ideas he has, and which would merit him being referred to as the likely “greatest foreign secretary in a generation” by David Cameron. Hague’s past foreign policy speeches have been solid, but unspectacular. He ticks off the likely issues, talks about global trends and looks knowledgeable about the crises that could emerge. But there is no overaching concept, such David Miliband’s idea of Britain as a "global hub". There is no Hague Doctrine.

Don’t you think that ‘The Ship Money Movement’ is a more appropriate name for a British anti-tax forum? You know, given the connotations of ‘Tea Party’ in these climes? Titles are instructive, and, as James wrote yesterday, the British right has a growing fascination with its American counterpart. Perhaps I’m over doing it, but it seems a testament to the State’s dominance in post-war Britain that the country’s libertarian tradition, extending back through Burke, Bolingbroke, Locke, Milton and to Hampden himself, is no longer the right’s primary inspiration. Putting my slightly absurd ruminations aside, the coming of the Tea Party Movement to Britain is significant.

The obsession of British politicians - and political journalists - with American politics is often mocked. But there's a clarity to American political messages that is often missing in this country. So it is good to see George Osborne borrowing a line from the Reagan playbook, and pointing out that people are now worse off than they were at the last election. The Tories desperately need to shift the focus of the campaign back onto Labour's failures and this is a start to that process. Osborne is delivering the Mais lecture tonight, one of the prestige dates in the British economic calendar. He's the first shadow Chancellor to deliver it, a sign of how much the markets and everyone else are waiting to see what Osborne does.

Bob Ainsworth has publicly criticised President Obama’s slothful deliberation on an Afghan troop surge. The Defence Secretary said: ‘We have suffered a lot of losses. We have had a period of hiatus while McChrystal's plan and his requested uplift has been looked at in the detail to which it has been looked at over a period of some months, and we have had the Afghan elections, which have been far from perfect let us say. All of those things have mitigated against our ability to show progress... put that on the other side of the scales when we are suffering the kind of losses that we are.