Globe and Mail: The waiting game

As Gordon Brown prepares to head to the United States, Doug Saunders in Canada's leading quality newspaper, The Globe and Mail, says a good deal of international diplomacy is on hold in an analysis piece published on Saturday.

Around the world, Jan. 21, 2009, has become the key date in politics. Diplomats and senior officials in a half-dozen countries have told me frankly that little of any significance is going to happen until that fateful Wednesday when either Hillary Clinton, John McCain or Barack Obama is inaugurated into office.

I am among the various think-tankers quoted in the piece - and there's even a plug for this modest blog.

"I think everyone's agreed that there is not going to be a literal Love, Actually moment — though there are certainly lots of people at Number 10 who would like to see that — but there is a real sense in this government that many important items on the international agenda are just going to have to wait until after Jan. 21," says Sunder Katwala, head of the Fabian Society, a venerable think tank with very close ties to the Brown administration (and keeper of a blog titled "Life after Bush").