Given Brown’s generally clinical and dour disposition compared to the bonhommerie of the Blair era, his intentions appeared clouded like the mists of his native Scotland. Brown’s visit to Camp David and meeting with George W. Bush seemed to have cleared some apprehensions as to future British policy in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the war on terror in general.

Brown has high ambitions on the international stage but as Matthew d’Ancona of the incisive political weekly The Spectator writes, “Prime Minister Brown confronts the reality that faces every holder of his office: namely that, whatever your convictions, opinions or prejudices, you cannot do anything much as a global policymaker without the support of the U.S.” He adds poignantly, “Mr. Brown may not want to be a poodle, but still less does he want to be a stray.” Especially in the aftermath of September 11th terrorist attacks on America, Tony Blair was unjustly accused of being dutiful poodle to Washington’s foreign policy.

First off, Brown is not only trying to emerge from the Blair shadow and status but as importantly, reappraise the nature of the Anglo/American Alliance. Brown represents much more of the Labour Party left-wing than Tony’s Blair more moderate New Labour.

Significantly though from the same party, Brown and Blair were long antagonists.

As D’ Ancona writes in The Spectator, “The sense of liberation from the miserable 13 year long political marriage to Blair is palpable. Every morning he clearly awakes and thinks not only “I am Prime Minister!’ but “Another day I don’t have to work for him!

Opines in the Daily Telegraph: “New Labour’s dead. It’s the Brown Party now and the Tories (opposition) must get used to that.”

So here we return to the obvious challenges; Iraq, Afghanistan and the wider war on terror. Shall Brown trim his sails for a significantly different course to the American ship of state or shall he continue to sail parallel with Washington?

On this crucial issue, Brown said all the right things and wisely evoked Sir Winston Churchill, the high priest of the Anglo/American alliance, to sooth any nagging trans-Atlantic concerns about shared values, commitment and national interests. While the Labour leftwing no doubt grumbled and gnashed while seeing his missives in the pages of the Guardian or the Independent, the fact remains that the Anglo/American ties matter far beyond the reaches of the Iraqi desert.

Later during a visit to the United Nations, Brown pushed for a Security Council resolution sending military forces to Sudan’s long suffering Darfur region. Interestingly the Darfur issue motivates the left-wing who demands military intervention to stop the humanitarian crisis and genocide. Brown endorses what I call fashionable foreign policy, almost wistfully deploying military force to places which do not hold, to put it politely, a direct national interest.

Though Gordon Brown never seemed to have shared Blair’s deep geopolitical insights and convictions about the imperative need to defeat Islamic jihadi terror, the thwarted terrorist attacks planned for London and Glasgow appear to have put him on a fast track learning curve. Moreover the reality of what is often called Londonistan, namely the religious and demographic Islamicification of parts of the United Kingdom confronts the Prime Minister with possible domestic ramifications should he seriously confront militant Islam.

Yet Gordon Brown is a clever politico. His appointment of ex-UN Development Program supremo Mark Malloch Brown (no relation) with a top Foreign Office portfolio and a Lordship no less, shows his willingness to tweak the U.S. Malloch Brown became one of the Bush Administration’s most reviled UN bigwigs during the twilight of the Annan era.

The Daily Telegraph opines, “He has a spider web of links to the Democrats, and is careful to draw a distinction between being pro-U.S. and being pro-Bush. In fairness, it is Brown’s America that is now in the ascendant, both in terms of electoral gains and of the growing popular demand for an evacuation from Iraq.”

Gordon Brown plays for the long run—interestingly he met with Bill Clinton while in New York to discuss America after the 2008 election.