It must have come as a great relief to ‘special relationship’ watchers in the UK that Barack Obama chose Gordon Brown as the first European leader to ring when he assumed office (albeit well after his calls to leaders on other continents). The news that Obama’s Kenyan grandfather had been tortured by the British during the Kenyan Mau Mau uprising during the 1950s had sent them into paroxysms of worry that the US might dump Britain as its special European friend, in favour of the less loaded embrace of France …