Gordoom will be furious, and Nokia sales will be up this afternoon. He would kill all the firstborn for similar comments from the US ambassador here, and Heaven only knows what he’d give for a photo-op like this.

The subject of our Prime Mentalist’s rage today will be one Philip Murphy, the US ambassador to Germany, who said “We need strong partners – and nowhere are there better or more committed partners than in Europe. And Germany is the centrepiece of the European Union,”  in a speech yesterday evening at Berlin’s American Academy.

Calling Germany’s partnership with the United States the most important relationship of the past 60 years, Murphy said the transatlantic alliance still formed the foundation of US diplomacy around the world.

Listing an array of pressing issues which Obama is currently avoiding by playing golf, Murphy dismissed the idea that Europe’s importance to American foreign policy had diminished since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Saying Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel had a “common agenda” the ambassador emphasised America needed help from its “extraordinarily strong ally Germany” to ensure global prosperity and bring peace to Afghanistan. There was some climate change nonsense in there too.

“I want to underscore the importance of the effort by German soldiers and police trainers to bring stability to this troubled land,” Murphy said. “We recognise the commitment that it takes, not just from the men and women in uniform, but from their families and indeed the entire German nation.”

Obviously considering his venue there was no mention of the fact that the Germans are a poor third in providing manpower in Afghanistan and not in any of the dangerous bits either. You can also understand playing up the Germany alliance whilst being a guest there…but can you imagine such effusive comments being made towards the current occupant of No10?

One-term Barry knows that McDoom is toast and won’t touch him with a bargepole. At the last conference they were both at, Brown had to chase Obama down the waiters’ corridors towards the kitchen to snatch a few words – which were then exaggerated to sound as though more had happened than Gordon asking him which way it was to the toilets (okay, that’s an exaggeration but the corridors bit is true). Watch out for more of the same sycophancy in the presence of The One in Hopenhagen.