Batchelor & Constable: What U.S./U.K. Special Relationship? 

John Batchelor and Simon Constable, Dow Jones, explore the spooky parallel history between the 2009 visit of veteran Scot Laborite Prime Minister Gordon Brown to new Democratic President Barack Obama at the White House and the 1933 visit of veteran Scot Laborite Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald to new Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  Simon asks what is the evidence of a "special relationship" other than the assertion there is a "special relationship?"  The seemingly trivial details of the return of a

Winston Churchill bust, the cancellation of a White House joint press conference, and the peculiar mismatch of the exchanged gifts -- historically significant artifacts of two famous English ships, Gannet and Resolute, and a set of Sir Martin Gilbert's biography of Churchill from the PM vs a set of Hollywood movies, in obsolesced DVD format, including Star Wars from the POTUS -- all point to a chill in the "special relationship."  As ever, the English media enjoyed mocking the PM for the tempest and later for the PM's plaintive speech before a joint session of Congress (right).