Gordon Brown during his visit to Abu Dhabi this week. Photograph: Ali Haider/EPA
Gordon Brown today pledges to work with Barack Obama to create a new world order where 'markets need morals' and people come first, in a first real glimpse of how he plans to conduct the new special relationship.
Writing here today, the Prime Minister says that the path of history has been changed by an election in which American voters backed a progressive candidate offering more government intervention to protect families and businesses.
'It is up to us whether 2008 is remembered for a financial crash that engulfed the world or for a new resilience and optimism from a generation which faced the economic storm head-on and built the fair society in its wake,' he writes. Downing Street is increasingly optimistic, following Friday's climbdown in which the banks agreed to pass on the Bank of England's interest rate cut to borrowers, that they will now begin lending again to businesses and homeowners, justifying the decision to bail them out.
But victory for a like-minded Democrat in the US, and less dramatically Labour's win in Glenrothes, have also boosted Brown's political confidence in his tactics. Yesterday senior ministers attacked suggestions from Trevor Phillips, chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, that 'institutional racism' in the Labour party would have stopped an Obama breaking through in Britain.
Harriet Harman, the cabinet Equalities Minister, said the suggestion had been 'simply wrong', adding: 'Barack Obama's campaign challenged pessimism and defied defeatism and said "Yes, we can" - and he made this happen. That's what we need to do here as well.'
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