Yo Brown!

Now it is Brown's turn, and the matchmakers this time are more wary. "The messages have already been sent out - the government is not going to be seen as the little brother in this partnership," says Robin Shepherd, senior fellow at the Royal Institute for International Affairs, better known as Chatham House.

But Shepherd is not holding his breath that Brown at Camp David will involve some seismic political shift: "It's unlikely he'll do anything other than hint at the most subtle of differences from Tony Blair." There will, he forecasts, be comments that stress the importance of the transatlantic relationship - but for Shepherd, the real political theatre of Brown's brief stay at Camp David will be "the way these two leaders interact".

That will leave the "Kremlinologists", the political junkies who thrive on decoding every word, every nuance, every semantic under-current, with little material to work with. The dialogue between Texan good ol' boy and straight-talking Scots Presbyterian isn't going to be a festival of communication. One Foreign Office insider fears that if Brown tries to laugh and smile too much at Bush's "apple pie humour", then "he'll look insincere and uncomfortable".

A theatre director currently working in London's West End said he'd tell some of his acting students to tune in. "It'll be like a Pinter play," he explained. "It's not necessarily about what is being said, it'll be about the way the characters physically react to each other, look at each other. The words will be only one element of their relationship."

FOR Shepherd, there are hints that a diplomatic script is already there and the two leaders know well the roles they have to play in this, their first formal summit. Bush, into the final 18 months of his second term, surrounded by an administration in free-fall and one of the lamest of lame-duck presidents the US has seen, will be ultra-careful not to allow Brown to add to his woes.

"Bush is desperate not to be seen as isolated from the world," Shepherd says. "The Bush team will therefore recognise what Brown's job in Camp David is." The script-in-waiting is for Brown to head for the United Nations in New York on Monday and say, "this is Bush listening to Britain", with the Bush team also able to say, "the relationship is still very much in tune".

The subtext of the Bush-Brown script will be that Brown can work with Bush (and it's just for 18 months, with the main US political focus already shifted to his successor, likely to be Democrat - even better news for Brown); and for Bush, in no position to choose who his new best friends are, Brown will oblige and reconfirm what he and his Foreign Secretary have already said: that Britain's determination to work with the Americans in general and the Bush administration in particular is "resolute". In short, expect no change of tone.

The contradictions inherent in this "same but different" message will be appreciated by Brown and his advisers. But the Atlanticist in Brown knows it can't be any other way. He has to begin the diplomatic DIY project that has him repair the damage left by Blair and the perception that the subservience of the "Yo Blair!" era was a grave error.

Yet he has to live with the realities of an institutionalised relationship that ties Britain closely with the US in the way we co-operate on defence, intelligence, nuclear and military technology and an array of other issues.

The away-day at Camp David won't give either leader the opportunity to begin redrawing their respective country's positions on key issues, but they can agree where the priorities currently are.

For Robin Niblett, the director of Chatham House, Bush is meeting Brown in an already weakened position. Writing in the current issue of the International Affairs journal, Niblett says few Americans share the "missionary zeal of the administration of President Bush since 9/11 for unilateralist foreign policies designed to promote democracy around the world as part of a strategy of exporting security".

"With the continuing violence in Iraq, the metastasizing of the terrorist threat beyond Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, and America's reputation for positive leadership in decline across much of the world, it is hardly surprising, therefore, that the candidates for the 2008 presidential election all underscore their determination to usher in a new era of more consensual international diplomacy, and to lead internationally by example, rather than by brute force."

Brown's new international development secretary, Douglas Alexander, would therefore not have been telling the US what it did not already know when he told the Council On Foreign Relations in Washington on July 12 that a country's strength should no longer be measured in what they could destroy.

But Alexander, as close to Brown as a political twin can be, went further: "We need to demonstrate by our word and our actions that we are internationalist, not isolationist; multilateralist, not unilateralist; active, not passive." He could have added - and few would have been surprised - "Brown not Blair".

Alexander was, however, delivering an uncomfortable message that Brown would not be an international apologist, as Blair was, for the Bush-Cheney isolationism which had failed and is shortly to come to its end. He added: "There is no security or prosperity at home unless we deal with the global challenges of security, globalisation, climate change, disease and poverty. We must recognise these challenges and champion an internationalist approach - seeking shared solutions to the problems we face."

DESPITE the reassurances from Alexander that there would be no sudden departure from the current US-UK policy on Iraq or in Afghanistan, he was signalling that international concerns shared by the two countries and by the European Union would now see Britain leaning towards a shared global response, rather than simply wait for its cue from the White House.

The roster of challenges, according to Niblett, include the dislocating effects of the rise of new economic super-powers such as China and India; new concerns about the reversal of democratic and market reforms in Latin America and Africa; the threat of international terrorism and its possible links to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; growing instability in the Middle East; competition for energy resources; open markets; and respect for human rights.

He says: "Even though this roster does not match the strategic clarity of the cold war mission, it does provide a broad portfolio of common interests around which to sustain a close transatlantic relationship."

For the unilateralists who remain at the heart of the Bush administration - their numbers reduced by the exit of Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld - Alexander's message will have been a painful reminder that when Blair first visited Camp David, the neo-conservatives' Campaign For A New American Century was at its peak, with plans for the introduction of pre-emptive military action advanced, and the sidelining of the UN already taken care of.

If there is a key subtext to Brown in Camp David today, it is his role as official undertaker to the neocon dream. Blair was Bush's official "international community" flag-waver, his fan-in-chief. Brown comes not to praise Bush, but to bury the neocon dream while sympathetically asking for business as usual in the "special relationship".

Bush in retreat and weakened means Brown can pull off this diplomatic coup de theatre in the long-running drama of the special relationship.

On the dinner table menu at Camp David will be Brown's multilateralism, and, if there is a dessert course, conversation over what to do about Iran. There will be no talk of unilateralist military action; no further adventure requiring Brown to have the "cojones" Bush so admired about Blair when Iraq was first targeted by the White House.

UNCOMFORTABLE for Washington? Sure. And they will have been prepared in advance of Brown's flight today. Leading the post-Blair diplomatic assault - travelling in advance of the prime minister's party - is Mark Malloch Brown, the government's new Foreign Office minister with responsibility for Africa, Asia and the UN.

If Douglas Alexander is the subtle voice of policy change, Lord Malloch Brown is the heavy shoulder knocking down the door. And the insiders in Washington know it.

Dr Nile Gardiner, director of the Margaret Thatcher Center For Freedom, a division of the right-wing Heritage Foundation in Washington, didn't hesitate in offering his opinion of Malloch Brown's appointment: "Faced with the rising threat of global terrorism, the insurgency in Iraq, counter-offensives by the Taliban in Afghanistan and the looming threat of Iran, the next few years will be a critical time for US-UK relations. It is imperative London and Washington work together in addressing these international issues of the day, which will involve close co-operation on the UN Security Council. It is hard to see how Malloch Brown's appointment to the UK government will help to advance the special relationship."

For Gardiner, Malloch Brown is the "clearest sign yet of a break with the stance of the Blair government. Malloch Brown, who served as chief of staff and deputy to former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, is well known for his anti-American views and fierce opposition to the war in Iraq His selection sends a clear signal that the Brown government wants a more openly critical stance towards US foreign policy".

And just in case anyone in Washington wasn't getting the signal loud and clear, Lord Malloch Brown turned the volume up when he said in a recent newspaper interview that the US and the UK would "no longer be joined at the hip" in foreign policy.

For John Bolton, Bush's former ambassador at the UN, Malloch Brown's appointment was a matter for outrage. "If Gordon Brown knew what he was doing when he appointed Mark Malloch Brown, it was a major signal that he wants a different relationship with the US. If he didn't know what he was doing that's not a good sign either."

Bolton, a neocon hawk, knows Malloch Brown's appointment wasn't an accident. And neither was it an accident that Malloch Brown chose to dismiss his critics, saying he wasn't anti-American and adding: "I'm quite happy to be described as anti-neocon. If they see me as a villain, I will wear it as a badge of honour."

Simplistic it may be, but Brown's strategic planning appears to have worked well. The "good cop, bad cop" routine - with Alexander and Malloch Brown in black hats, and David Miliband in the white hat promising "no change, honest" - has worked.

America knows what to expect today: they will get a Scot, talking straight and anxious to please. And they will get a Texan president on his way out and anxious to keep what friends he has, whatever the cost. In this latest chapter of the special relationship, there is only one certainty: the meeting at Camp David will not begin with "Yo! Brown!"