A Sea Change in America is a Sea Change for the World.

The loss of the Massachusetts Senate seat to the Republican newbie Scott Brown is perhaps of insignificance to us here in the other half of the pan-Atlantic "Special Relationship". But strain a little harder through those Anglocentric goggles and you will see that the picture starts to change. Look at it from a global dimension and the whole thing starts to unfold rather rapidly.

Why should we care about American politics? It often feels like we're witnessing nothing more than a bizzare freak show. A coming together of egomaniacs and religious nutballs to do battle with slightly less egotistical religious nutballs. But ever since the Korean war, American politics has been Global politics. Rooselvelt once said that foreign policy was domestic policy with its top hat on. If this is indeed the case then American domestic politics may be deciding, not just the fate of its own nation, but of all the nations of the world.

But the divide in American politics is becoming more divisive for the wider world than ever before and the political parties more polarised than they were since Nixon.

Hands up anyone from the UK who really actually cares about the US healthcare bill that Scott Brown's election to the Senate has now put in jeopardy... Hmmm not many I imagine (I see some of you are saying, what healthcare bill? If you are one of these people then I advise you to watch Michael Moore's unsublte but nonetheless eye opening film 'Sicko'). After all we have the NHS in this country and for all the moaning we do about it we wouldn't give it up for the world. Does that make us socialists... in America it does. Paradoxically it also makes us Nazis and Communists to some of the more confused neo-con demonstrators. They're not all the brightest of folks y'all.

The significance of the healthcare bill's future has wider implications for it marks a sea change in American politics. This is all about political capital and Obama doesn't have a lot of that right now, on the one year anniversary of his inaugeration. This is a dangerous blow and I cannot see any good that can possibly come of it despite defiant Democratic calls for unity and a new "gloves off" approach to Republican intransigence.

And so as I watched the shameful YouTube video of Scott Brown's acceptance speech as he told a cheering if slightly stunned crowd that his daughters were "available", I cannot help but think that the significance of this event has wider implications than the healthcare of poor Americans. More globally significant is that with the Democrat's fillibuster proof majority now gone in the Senate, any meanigfull carbon emissions bill may well full by the wayside. And lets not forget that the one already on the table is only a pathetic 4% reduction by 2020 based on 1990 levels. Hardly enought to avert serious climate destabilisation. What chance have we got in a nation of climate denialists and ignoramuses, now this baffoon has replaced the late great Ted Kennedy.

It may often seem that America is indeed operating in a parallel universe to the rest of informed Western civilisation but without them on board, a recalcitrant China and a bullish India will never make significant moves towards cutting their vastly burgeoning emissions. And so the deadlock will continue. Time, as we are consistently being told, is not on our side... and nor it would appear is Scott Brown.


Politics in America then is at the heart of Copenhagen's failure and we should not fool ourselves into thinking that Obama is America's panacea. The trouble is that the majority of Americans are impatient, myopic unilateralists at best, and stupid, ignorant isolationists emboldened by their own sense of infallibility at worst.

Just look at former Cosmo model Scott Brown. He may not realise it and he probably never will, but his election could have serious repurcussions for all of us, not just for the circus that is American politics.

God bless America? God save us all!