What does Barack Obama's victory mean for Britain?

The Guardian's political editor, Patrick Wintour, analyses the likely effect of the Democratic candidate's triumph in key policy areas

• Patrick Wintour, political editor
• guardian.co.uk,
• Wednesday November 05 2008 15.51 GMT
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US Senator and Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama speaks to supporters during a rally in Manassas, Virginia. Photograph: Denny Henry/EPA

As British politicians scramble to claim Barack Obama's victory as either an endorsement for change or for progressive politics, the sober minded civil servants in the Treasury, Foreign Office and Number 10 are coldly assessing what Obama's soaring rhetoric means for vital British strategic interests.

Even though the most hard-bitten policy-makers in London will be daring to dream that suddenly all things are possible after the frustrations on the Blair-Bush partnership, Number 10 recognises that the roadblocks to reform established by eight years of a Bush presidency cannot be torn down overnight.

Competing demands on Obama's time, US-specific interests, the slide into worldwide recession and the requirement to address domestic issues, such as healthcare, means continuity will be as important as change. Bush had anyway in his later years become a reluctant multilateralist.

But hopes are high in Downing Street that there will, for the first time in eight years, at least be a common starting point with Obama on all the big issues of climate change, trade talks, international financial regulation, Iraq, Afghanistan and the wider Middle East. Gordon Brown's new-found international prestige may also give him some traction with Obama.

Brown is flying to Washington on Friday week to attend the G20 summit on reviving the world economy being hosted by President Bush, and it is possible that Brown will grab a bilateral meeting with Obama at some stage during that visit, even though No 10 was counselling caution this morning on whether the formalities of presidential transitions will allow such an early meeting. Obama himself may want to keep his distance as he assembles his presidential team.

In the short term, the most pressing issue for Brown and Obama may be Iraq, the issue that dominated the Blair-Bush relationship.

Britain has been preparing for months to make an announcement before Christmas on how the remaining UK troops are to move from their over-watch role in Basra province.

The defence secretary, John Hutton, told MPs on Monday he was hoping for "a very significant change in our mission in the early part of next year". This will in effect leave Britain with a residual role in Iraq by the middle of next summer.

Number 10 is aware that even though Obama may want to pull out of Iraq within 18 months, he will have to pick up the currently stalled talks with the Iraqi government on the legal status of US and allied troops that remain in Iraq after December 31.

It is possible there will have to be a new UN mandate, something Britain will also need for its troops to remain through 2009.

But Obama and Brown are at one in wanting to shift the emphasis from Iraq to Afghanistan, symbolised by the appointment of General David Petraeus to oversee the ailing war in Afghanistan. There have been reports that Obama is already asking the UK to prepare to increase its troop numbers by as much as 3,000 in Afghanistan.

The foreign secretary, David Miliband, suggested today that Britain was not eager to add to its troop numbers at this stage. Britain, like the US, would instead like to see other Nato partners contribute more, or to lift their caveats to engage in more dangerous fighting.

But Miliband emphasised that in his talks with the Obama team, there had been a convergence of Anglo-Obama thinking. He argued there had to be a comprehensive social, economic and political strategy, and not just a military strategy.

In particular there had to be a comprehensive approach right across the Afghanistan and Pakistan tribal borders, something the Bush administration has slowly come to recognise.

Obama, through Petraeus, is likely to propose a troop surge, larger than the planned extra three US brigades. A bigger Nato footprint would reduce the number of civilian casualities since the reliance on air power could be reduced.

On wider Middle East issues, Bush has clearly failed in his ambition to secure an Israel-Palestinian peace accord by the end of his presidency. The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, is scheduled to hold a meeting of the Middle East Peace Quartet on November 9, but she may have to limit herself to progressing prisoner exchanges.

Tony Blair wants to remain Middle East envoy for the Quartet, and it will be his task to try to persuade Obama that he cannot afford to let the peace process slip down the in-tray as other issues press in. The outgoing Israel prime minister, Ehud Olmert, dismissed calls to put negotiations on hold until Israeli elections on February 10, insisting his provisional government had powers to conduct the talks.

But Britain is not expecting much soon, or that Obama has a magic wand. The best hope is reviving the 2002 Saudi peace plan, and that Obama's victory persuades Israel to elect Tzipi Livni. Miliband expressed his pleasure that Obama is willing to hold direct talks with the Syrians, and so possibly reduce the influence of Iran.

But Brown is most likely to see his role as persuading Obama that he can take the lead in the generation-spanning cause - the need to create a new energy economy, and, in so doing, help to contain climate change.

In Brown's eyes, nothing will do as much to improve US standing in Europe than if Obama takes the lead in securing an agreement on a post-Kyoto protocol international climate agreement, due to be agreed at Copenhagen at the end of next year.

Obama has said he will support a global cap and trade programme to set a growing price on carbon, so ending US dependence on Middle East oil by the end of the first quarter of the century.

But even with a Democrat majority in the Senate, it will be politically difficult to gain Congressional approval. Raising energy prices in a recession may not be the easiest way to secure a second term in the White House.

There are also intense talks to be held on distributing responsibility for all this between the Chinese and the US. The EU is struggling to make its own smaller cap and trade scheme work, so a worldwide scheme is ambitious in the extreme.

Brown will need to persuade Obama it is worth the political price, and part of developing a wider global governance in which China and India have to become participants, rather than bystanders.

That same principle will apply to Brown's plans to reform the IMF. Brown has been arguing the IMF faces two big problems. First, its capital base is small relative to the size of global capital flows, reducing its influence. Obama agrees on that.

Second, the IMF has an image problem as a creature of the US. The voting structure gives the US, which has a 17% share, a veto over decisions that require an 85% super-majority. Meanwhile, even large emerging economies such as China and India have small shares of 3.5% and 2% respectively.

Is Obama going to be willing to be seen to abandoning US power on such a prestigious international body so quickly? It will be a long process. The new Bretton Woods will take a year to negotiate.

On trade, the WTO came close to securing a deal in the summer, and some optimists hope that a deal could even now be struck before Bush leaves the White House.

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