In U.S. Visit, Brown To Urge 'New Deal'

By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, March 3, 2009

LONDON, March 2 -- British Prime Minister Gordon Brown arrives in Washington this week to press a "global new deal" that he hopes will shore up his sagging poll numbers at home and solidify his place as the international leader of efforts to surmount the deepening financial crisis.

On Tuesday, Brown will become the first European leader to meet with Obama at the White House, and he will address a joint session of Congress on Wednesday.

"He is hoping to be seen as a genuine global leader," said Michael Cox, a professor of international relations at the London School of Economics. "He wants to show that he is the big man on the big stage when the big crisis hits."

A month before Brown hosts President Obama and leaders of the world's major economies in London on April 2, he will press his case for an overhaul of the world's financial regulations and institutions.

"President Obama and I will discuss this week a global new deal, whose impact can stretch from the villages of Africa to reforming the financial institutions of London and New York," Brown wrote in the Sunday Times newspaper.

Obama's decision to meet with Brown before other European leaders such as French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been interpreted in Britain as a symbolic victory.

But Peter Kellner, head of the British polling firm YouGov, said that although Brown's meeting with Obama is important, it may not be as important as his address to Congress.

"These things are normally mostly ceremonial, but Brown's speech to Congress is the biggest single event of the trip," Kellner said.

Obama has yet to spell out the U.S. position on revamping the global financial system or how he views Brown's calls for an international global regulator to oversee financial markets. But Obama and Brown have responded to the financial crisis with similar economic stimulus packages and bank bailouts.

"The president said in September that we have to act together in helping to stimulate the economies of the G-20, as well as ensuring that there's some financial rules of the road so that we don't find ourselves in the same position a few years down the line," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said in Washington on Monday. "And I think those are the topics that are likely to dominate both the meeting and the working lunch that they'll have."

Of concern to Europeans, Kellner said, is what many perceive as Congress's tendency to be inward-looking and protectionist.

Some Europeans say they suspect that Obama also leans toward protectionism, but there are larger worries that Congress could scuttle any plans Obama puts forward to contribute to the international economic rescue.

The message from Brown, Cox said, would be, "America has much more power, but clearly needs and requires good advice from friends."

Brown and Obama are also expected to discuss Afghanistan, which will be a central issue at NATO's 60th anniversary summit on the French-German border that Obama will attend after his economic meetings in London.

Obama wants European allies to contribute more troops to the Afghanistan effort. Britain already has the second-largest contingent of troops there. Analysts in London said it was likely that Obama and Brown would not discuss additional British troops, but strategies for persuading other European nations to send more.

British analysts are also watching the trip closely for signs of Obama's sentiments about the traditional "special relationship" with Britain. Many in Britain are anxious about what the Times newspaper, in an editorial, called Obama's "perceived indifference to the U.S. relationship with Britain."

Analysts here made much of the fact that Gibbs recently spoke of Washington's special "partnership" with London, rather than "relationship."

Brown heads to Washington at a time when he trails Conservative party leader David Cameron in polling for national elections that must be held by May 2010.

A Guardian/ICM poll last week showed the Conservatives leading Brown's Labor Party by 12 points, and 63 percent of those polled said Labor would do better in the next election with someone other than Brown as its leader.

Brown's handling of the financial crisis has improved his popularity among voters since its lows last summer. But Kellner said Brown is hoping the reflected glow of Obama, who is extremely popular throughout Europe, will enhance his wobbly ratings.

"By going to the States, talking to the president, being seen on the stage of history at this critical moment, that raises his stature and puts clear blue water between him and the Conservatives," Cox said. "The subtext is: 'If the president loves me, why get rid of me?' "

Staff writer Michael A. Fletcher in Washington and special correspondent Karla Adam contributed to this report.