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It seems that the Treasury is having a bit of trouble liaising with the Obama White House about being on message at the G20 London Summit. I cannot believe these officials suffer from the same naivety as Brown, who imagines that in some way (for the Lord alone knows what reason) America or its Administration cares one way or another about what Britain thinks. If anyone needed evidence after more than sixty years of the 'special' relationship that it's only special when either side needs it that way, then the stony silence of Congress when the Saviour of the World talked of the evils of protectionism provided it in spades.

I've been watching some reruns and archive stuff about the Brown-Obama meeting, and for any student of body language, three things are obvious throughout: Obama was going through the motions, Brown was desperate, and these are not two men destined for any kind of relationship - special or otherwise.

Over the decades of FDRs and Kennedys and Reagans and Dubyas, the more sentimental sort of Brit has gained the idea that Americans are, when push comes to shove, people who will look after us. They are not - any more than we (if we are all honest with ourselves) like the American way of life that much. We think they're brash, trigger-happer nutters, and they think we're prim, snooty crypto-Commies.

We must remember at all times that FDR was an East Coast anglophile aristocrat, that Kennedy was a Churchill admirer who had been partly educated in Europe, that Reagan was a cosmopolitan film star with a crush on Margaret Thatcher, while Dubya had a war to win and needed an ally. We should also be cognisant of the facts: the vast majority of Americans thought we were doomed in 1940, and would almost certainly never have lifted a finger to help without Pearl Harbor. When we needed his help over Suez in 1956, even this country's genuinely firm friend Eisenhower dumped on us from a great height. When Al Q'eida admirers bombed London in 2005, the US military told its personnel to get the Hell out with all dispatch. And while Lend-Lease got us through the Nazi blockade, we only stopped paying the bill in 2007.

I count myself an Amerophile, in that I have almost unfailingly found the ordinary US citizen kind, straight and wonderfully civic - with delightful manners that put ours to shame. But corporate and realpolitik America are not something nice to behold - any more than the British versions have been over the centuries.

In America, you are expected to look after yourself, in the sense that it is your responsibility. Over time and in some walks of life, this has been perverted to mean 'do what it takes, but Look After Number One'. What binds Americans together (and divides us) is the idea that come what may, it's America First. We desperately need the personal responsibility ethic in the EU, but the world emphatically does not need America First right now.

Obama has piled into the Kyoto accord because to do otherwise would be dumb given the mounting evidence of climate change - not because he wants the US to be a shining beacon of philanthropy. In economic matters, he quite rightly sees the USA at a historical crossroads; he does not want to go down in history as the uppity nigger who let the emerging powers first reduce and then destroy America's global hegemony.

He's probably right. Only a pompous Scottish idiot would expect the Obama White House to do anything else at the G20 beyond vague strategies and the avoidance of commitment. America is going to go protectionist: we in Europe should get over it - especially Britain.

James Lovelock and the C-Word

'Nothing for Nothing' is infinitely preferable to 'Do Nothing'

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