At a time when the US administration (some of the most senior US Generals included) is increasingly questioning the reality of its special relationship with the present Israeli coalition government led by Right Winger Benjamin Natanyahu, another ‘special relationship’ is being called into question. This time by the junior partners ‘the Brits’ who in a post Blairite world are now having some serious doubts about the benefits of its own long cherished (by politicians at least) special relationship with the US [ref: House of Commons Foreign Affairs Publication].
However, even the US administration, faced with a deficit quite as serious as that of the UK would not humiliate its Generals and sink to the pettiness and hypocrisy of the UK government, led by the truly appalling Mr Brown, who has ordered its Generals and Air Marshals to travel second class when travelling by rail.
UK MPs and government ministers still, of course, enjoy the privilege of travelling first class (or in golf cart one)!No wonder a Sunday Times You Gov poll of 1,500 people shows that by nearly 2:1 voters believe that this is the most corrupt parliament in Britain’s history.
This aside, the conclusion has to be that if special relationships are to remain special they need to be not only nurtured by both sides but never ever taken for granted by either side.
Those special relationships that do not endure fail most of all through lack of respect for the other partner’s behaviour rather than necessarily the other partner’s point of view. In business as in international relations it is much the same.
0 comments:
Post a Comment