Below was posted by Nicholas_J in another thread. I thought it deserved it's own.
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Nicholas_J:
Kerry is a personal friend of a member of Tony Blair's government, one Gordon Brown. There is a vocal group calling for Labour to get rid of Blair and replace him with somewone else to serve as Prime Minister. This is not unusual in British Politics and they can replace Blair without Labour losing it place as the majority party.
Kerry has recently had meetings with Brown, and he also has close relationships with the the German and French Ambassadors to the United Nations.
In fact, Blair is so worried that he has ordered members of his Govenrment to stay away from Kerry for the rest of the presidential campaign after hearing of Browns meetings with Kerry this fall.
Will the PM turn his back on Bush?
JASON BEATTIE AND FRASER NELSON
THE accents around the table told the story. In the campaign room at Labour’s Millbank HQ, the Scottish brogue of Gordon Brown and Douglas Alexander jostled with the harsher American accents of Bob Shrum and Stan Greenberg.
Labour’s 2001 election campaign masterminds started every day with a morning meeting born of a long tradition of fraternity between Labour and the Democrats. This is a relationship Mr Blair is now desperately trying to put on ice, as he orders his staff to stay away from Senator John Kerry’s campaign team until the end of the presidential elections in November...
That is to say, he cannot airbrush out Gordon Brown. The Chancellor has been an American politics junkie since attending the 1984 Democratic Convention. Later, he started to holiday in Cape Cod, an economists’ haven and the garden of Massachusetts, political home of Senator Kerry. The regular holiday crowd includes Larry Summers, Clinton’s last Treasury secretary and former tutor of Ed Balls, Mr Brown’s chief economic adviser. The idea of making the Bank of England independent was a thesis Balls learned from Summers...
One of Mr Brown’s longest-standing friends in Washington is Mr Shrum, key adviser to Al Gore in his struggle with Mr Bush four years ago. He has now been enlisted by Mr Kerry as his speechwriter. Then there is Carter Eskew, an Al Gore aide, whom Mr Brown met recently in Washington to discuss strategy.
The final link in Mr Brown’s Democratic network is Ed Miliband, senior Treasury aide and brother of the schools minister, David Miliband.
http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=263012004 Gordon Brown was one of the earliest peopl aware of Kerry's presidential aspirations, this being revealed to him by Kerry shortly after Bush's election in 2000.
No 10 unease at Brown's contacts with John Kerry
By Francis Elliott, Deputy Political Editor
15 February 2004
John Kerry, the frontrunner to challenge George Bush for the US presidency this autumn, has held a series of private meetings with Gordon Brown. The Senator set to win the Democratic nomination has links with the Chancellor stretching back over a decade.
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=491464 The caucus comes to town: Democrats meet in London, UK, to choose their man
By Marie Woolf
11 February 2004
In a Bloombsury hotel on a chilly February night, elegant women carrying New York public library bags mixed with city types in power suits and younger folk in chinos and loafers. They had one thing on their mind: getting rid of President George Bush and finding the Democrat candidate to deliver them that result.
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=490036 Brown is Blairs chief rival for control of the Labour government. Blair's support of the Bush Administration has placed him on thin ice with his own party, and Gordon Brown is being put forward as the man who is more a "True Democrat Supporter", not Blair.
Bush's recent attempt to heal the rift with Germany's Gerhardt Schroeder is based almost totally on the White House fears of both German and French support for a Kerry administration.
Blair is also anxious to rebuild bridges with both Chirac and Schroder due to his own untenable situation within his own party, realizing that a Kerry win could lead to his being unseated as Labour leader, resulting in Brown replacing him as Prime Minister with the backing of a new U.S. Government.
One of the reasons that Kerry is the best possible choice for the Democratic nominnee is simply the massive support he seems to have from a number of leaders of the E.U. and in particular, the support of the member of the Labour Party most liable to replace Blair (as well as having the support of British COnservatives as a foil aainst Blairs support for Bush)
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