Pride of place in the cube-shaped library at the British ambassador’s residence in Washington goes to a bust of Winston Churchill. Ever since it departed the Oval Office at the White House, Jacob Epstein’s sculpture has been cast as a symbol of Barack Obama’s antipathy towards Britain, the UK’s declining influence in the world, or Obama’s own lack of Churchillian leadership against the Islamic State.



Not surprisingly, the man who currently sits with Churchill looking over his shoulder every day rejects all three narratives. Sir Peter Westmacott, who next month finishes his stint as British ambassador to “the single most important country in the world”, says the bust was only ever on loan as a personal gift from Tony Blair to George W Bush for the duration of his presidency.

“So, to be honest, we always expected that to leave the Oval Office just like everything else that a president has tends to be changed,” he explained in a valedictory interview with the Guardian. “Even the carpet is usually changed when the president changes.”

That has not stopped Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, in particular, from repeatedly referencing the Churchill sculpture’s ejection shortly after Obama came to office as the first sign of his weak leadership. Others regarded it as a death blow to Churchill’s timeworn “special relationship”. Westmacott, who turns 65 on Wednesday, mused: “It does pop up in conversation quite often as an ‘indication’ of how President Obama turned his back on the UK. It doesn’t really ring true.

“President Obama seems to me to be somebody who’s pretty fond of the UK and never misses an opportunity to tell us how enthusiastic he is and the affection he feels towards the royal family, for example. He always makes time for senior members of the royal family when they’re here: he saw Prince William, saw Prince Harry, saw the Prince of Wales.”

President Bush and British ambassador Christopher Meyer with the controversial Churchill bust. Photograph: Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty Images

Indeed, even as Britain’s political, economic and military clout in America declines, Westmacott has always been a believer in the importance of soft power to hug its decision-makers close. Along with the royal family, he has championed Wimbledon tennis, served canapés of battered fish, chips and mushy peas with Newcastle Brown Ale and even dressed as a Beatle for a party marking the 50th anniversary of the Fab Four’s first tour of the US when, as they entered the British embassy, Ringo Starr lost a lock of his hair to a screaming diplomatic corps that threw decorum to the winds.

Westmacott also held a dinner in Hillary Clinton’s honour with a video message from the cast of the transatlantic hit Downton Abbey. At another recent reception for Hugh Bonneville and other actors in the period drama, the ambassador thanked them for nurturing cultural links between the two nations and recalled learning that Clinton is a “fanatical” Downton fan. Guests included former US senator Jay Rockefeller.

There had been theories in some circles that Obama felt antipathy towards Britain. The media speculated that, as the son of a Kenyan, he might have harboured a grudge over Churchill sending troops to Kenya in 1952 to crush the Mau Mau uprising and, more generally, over Britain’s colonial misdeeds. In his autobiography, Dreams from My Father, he writes of being taken aback by the prejudices of a young Briton who speaks of “poor buggers” and “godforsaken countries” in Africa.

But in a BBC interview earlier this year, Obama emphasised that “Great Britain has always been our best partner”, “there’s no country where we have closer affinity in terms of values” and even that “fantastic” is one of his favourite British words: “So much better than awesome.” Westmacott, for his part, uses phrases such “joined at the hip” and “on the same page” and says Obama shows “great charm”.

He added: “I think his relationship with the British prime minister is as good as his relationship with any other head of government.”



Yet there was a setback two years ago when the British parliament rejected military intervention against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s government to deter the use of chemical weapons. It was a defeat for David Cameron, whose defence secretary warned that it would damage relations with the US.

Westmacott reflected: “I think it was a disappointment. It wasn’t the outcome the British government wanted, it wasn’t the outcome the American government wanted … My own view is that in itself it was a bump in the road and you move on, but it took us a while to move on in the way that made a difference in terms of military action.”

Obama, having pledged that Assad’s use of chemical weapons would cross a “red line”, had seemed poised to strike but just two days after the British vote referred the matter to Congress instead, which effectively knocked it dead and, some would argue, enabled conditions for the rise of Isis. Westmacott added: “I think also, if we are really honest, that parliamentary decision was a factor in the decision of the United States government not to take action at that moment.

“The president was going to take action and then he decided he would go to Congress, and then I think it became clear to the legislative handlers that the votes might not have been there either, although my understanding is that there had been a number of assurances given that the votes would be there from the leadership.”

Earlier this month the British parliament did vote to extend bombing from Iraq to Syria, and Westmacott denies the charge of Cruz and others that the coalition is too passive. “The issue is not so much a lack of leadership or lack of courage. It is about careful deliberation as to what public opinion and parliamentary opinion is going to feel is reasonable, but also what works, what makes things better. If it had been clear what the answer is to the terrible human suffering in Syria was at an earlier stage, if the answers had been easy, we would have taken them.”

Westmacott, set to retire from the foreign service after previous spells in Iran, Turkey and France, had clearly relished his front-row seat to the Obama years. He praised healthcare reform, action on climate change and consolidating the economic recovery but suspects that Obama himself would be disappointed by the stubbornness of income inequality. “I think many of the things that he wanted to do domestically he has done.”

He also cited the Iran nuclear deal and moves to normalise relations with Cuba, which took “political courage”, as significant achievements on the world stage. “I think that in the early years particularly, when Hillary was in the State Department and the president was riding the wave of his popularity, they did a remarkable job of making America loved again after the difficult years of the previous regime,” he said.

“I think the legacy, the balance sheet, doesn’t look bad. It certainly doesn’t feel to me like this is a lame-duck presidency which has given up. He’s motoring along and he’s doing through executive action what he needs to.”

Trump is pushing a few important buttons. It is not accidental that his baseball cap says, ‘Make America great again’

Even so, Obama’s last lap in 2016 appears set to be overshadowed by the race for the White House, especially the outlandish antics of Donald Trump. What does his rise say about America? “It shows that there is a lot of anger and that’s partly about the income inequalities: the rich are very rich and there is a sense that the people at the bottom are being funded by hard-working families paying too high a level of tax. But I think it’s also that people are not feeling any better off than they were.

“There is a pushback against political correctness. There are a lot of people who love seeing Donald Trump say stuff which nobody else is saying, which nobody else should say or does say, and people think, ‘You know, that’s what I feel but I’m not allowed to say it.’ There’s a kind of mischievousness in the support Donald Trump is getting from that point of view.

“I think he’s pushing a few important buttons. It is not accidental that on the front of his baseball cap it says, ‘Make America great again’. For whatever reason, there are people who feel America is not at the moment the world’s dominant power who snaps its fingers and the rest of the world falls into place, that America has become a more reluctant leader, shall we say, and Trump is out there saying the opposite, and people say, ‘That’s great, that’s what America should be’.

“He also says, ‘Look at me, I’m rich, I’m a winner, I do stuff, I do deals, I’m not just a boring politician who’s done nothing in his life except make speeches’, and that resonates as well.”

It might be tempting to regard Trump, like the Churchill bust affair, as a metaphor for a country running out of ideas, an empire losing its lustre and ceding authority to China. Westmacott does not think so. “I don’t think this is a country which is in decline at all.

“You’ve probably got to a stage, in my opinion, where money talks too much in politics, in campaigns, in lobbying, in legislation, even in selection of law officers, more than it used to and perhaps more than is necessarily healthy. But it’s an extraordinary place. This is still the most prosperous and successful country in the world, the biggest economy. It is still the leader of the free world; I don’t see that changing any time soon.”