Brown’s call to US: Seize the moment to tackle world crisis

Gordon Brown yesterday invoked the spirit of American optimism as he challenged Congress to let Barack Obama lead the world away from self-defeating protectionism and the perils of irreversible climate change.
The prime minister’s 36-minute speech won 19 standing ovations but was, at crucial moments, received in silence on the Republican side of the aisle as he made the case for a united global effort to revive economies and to turn away from the Bush doctrine on the environment.
Brown said that during this peacetime crisis it was the task of government as “the representatives of the people to be the people’s last line of defence”.
Urging Congress to have “faith in the future” and in itself, he won strong applause when he called on members to recognise “now more than ever the world wants to work with you”. The divisions with Europe created by the Iraq war were over and a new generation of leaders across Europe were impatient to work in harmony with the new president who was prepared “to seize the moment”.
But he did not reiterate the belief - voiced by him incessantly in Britain - that the economic crisis had been caused by reckless American borrowing in the mortgage market, simply saying “an economic hurricane has swept the world creating a crisis of credit and confidence”.
Nor did he use the speech to make an express apology for the regulatory failures that led to the collapse of the world banking system; the nearest he came was an admission that he had learned “many things” during the recent events.
http://votetags.info/2009/03/browns-call-to-us-seize-the-mom...