Junior Partner?
Adam Boulton July 21, 2010 2:22 PM
David Cameron has come up with a new way to describe the country of which he is Prime Minster.
He’s been telling Americans that Britain is the “junior partner” in the special relationship.
When I queried this with him this morning, he replied that it was a fact and had been dating back at least to the allied military effort in the Second World War. You can see what Cameron is driving at. Britain is self-evidently smaller, poorer, less populous, and less powerful than the United States. But is “junior” really the right word?
Look it up in the dictionary, and definitions include younger and less experienced. That surely doesn’t cover the nation which colonised America. And don’t most of us expect junior partners to take orders from senior ones? Certainly the US TV news queen Diane Sawyer even suggested to Cameron that it was not the place of junior partners to criticize their betters.
David Cameron has tried to establish a new practical working relationship between Britain and America during this trip, but on “junior” has he tried too hard to please?
