Rupert Cornwell: The PM, the Pope, and some political realities

How easy to mock Gordon Brown and his current visit to America. Once again, nature's brooding, seemingly pre-ordained number two is playing second fiddle. For a decade Tony Blair dominated the stage. Now, in the capital of Britain's most important ally, thanks to a quirk (or should one say blunder?) of diplomatic scheduling, he is being eclipsed by Pope Benedict XVI.

Poor Gordon. No one is going to name him, as one American magazine apparently has the Pope, the world leader with the best accessories. Washington is being dazzled by those papal red leather shoes. Gordon has not been the man in white, travelling rockstar-like in the popemobile through Washington's streets. It was not him who dispensed the blessing at a mass in the city's new baseball stadium on a glorious spring morning yesterday.

The excitement generated by the Papal presence is entirely understandable. Rarely has this country been in greater need of succour, spiritual as well as material, than now. But before our Prime Minister's trip is merely added to the long list of miscues that began with last autumn's funked election call, a reality check is in order.

This is Benedict's first trip as pontiff to the US, and the first by a pope since the sexual abuse scandal which shamed the US Catholic church. It is an occasion of both introduction and atonement.

Visits by British prime ministers are two a penny by contrast. Not so long ago, America was infatuated by Tony Blair. But even he would have been lost amid this week's hoopla (though Blair's PR-adept advisers would surely have avoided such a scheduling clash in the first place). But consider that scheduling clash in another way. Which visit matters more for world affairs? Seen in that light, Brown is not the man eclipsed.

The observation is not meant as a paean to the "special relationship", the two most tiresome words in international diplomacy. Nor is it to suggest that Brown's hankerings for Britain to serve as a "bridge" between the US and Europe are any more likely to yield results than those of Blair before him. Indeed, the hankerings are especially pointless now, given that France and Germany both have their most pro-American leaders in years.

Nor, finally, is it to suggest that momentous decisions were taken at the Prime Minister's meetings yesterday with George Bush – now entering terminal lame duck status and who, on the war in Iraq, the most important foreign policy issue facing the country, has effectively passed the buck to whoever succeeds him in the White House.

Which leads to the most noteworthy aspect of his visit. Despite their all-consuming struggle for the Democratic presidential nomination, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama thought it was worth taking time off to go to the British Embassy yesterday to spend 45 minutes with a man who, no more than the Pope, obviously cannot take sides between them – and whose support, even if he did, would not shift a single vote ahead of next week's crucial Pennsylvania primary. Clinton and Obama were followed by John McCain. Thus the remarkable spectacle of a visiting foreign leader receiving all three contenders for the White House in the space of a single morning.

At these discussions, Iraq will have been front and centre. Assuming he puts off the election until spring 2010, Brown will be dealing with one of the three for almost 18 months. During that period the two countries, separately and together, will perforce take a series of vital decisions, not only on their respective troop presence in Iraq, but on the related issues of Iran and Afghanistan.

Right now, Britain's stock here on Iraq is not high. The shambles in Basra has stoked criticism of the British pullout from the country's second city. "How many divisions has the Pope?", Stalin once asked. Despite Brown's decision to halt further troop withdrawals, some in the Bush administration pose the same scornful question about our current presence around Basra (once hailed, incidentally, as a model for the conduct of the occupation.)

For better or worse, however, we remain America's most important partner in Iraq. On Wednesday, the President and Pontiff talked about the war, but mainly about the plight of Iraqi Christians – and certainly not about the make-or-break decisions examined by the President and the Prime Minister, or (even more important) by Brown and the three candidates.

There is, of course, a limited amount even the two most telepathic interlocutors can cover in just three quarters of an hour. But that the sessions took place at all shows that a British prime minister still matters here. Indeed, in his own plodding and earnest fashion, he can matter as much as a Pope.

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