Smiling in the face of danger

Mr Cameron becomes the first foreign leader to fly aboard Air Force One, attends a basketball game and a reception packed with tame expatriate British celebrities, as well as a state banquet.

Such a welcome will do no harm to Mr Cameron, for whom the apparently cordial relationship he enjoys with the president is a useful boost to his desire to claim the middle ground back home; equally, Mr Obama will be only too conscious that an association with a relatively youthful Right-wing Prime Minister not stained by the eurozone crisis may go some way towards soothing the anxieties of conservative voters in America during an election year.

There is no reason to suppose that the affable rapport the two leaders project is artificial; still less that their assertion in a joint article for the Washington Post yesterday that the relationship between Britain and the US remains “essential” is insincere. Even if the alliance between the two countries is no longer the pivot on which world events revolve, it is undoubtedly mutually beneficial.

And on this visit, adversity draws Mr Cameron and Mr Obama together more closely than hitherto. Away from the photocalls, their talks will undoubtedly be dominated by Afghanistan. Horror has struck both Britain and the US in the last week or so; the deaths of six British troops in a single attack – five of them from our county’s finest, the Yorkshire Regiment – and the murders of 16 Afghan civilians by a rogue US soldier, reprisals for which threaten the life of every fighting man striving to help that benighted country.

Add to the equation the crisis in Syria, the threat posed by Iran and the anti-west Vladimir Putin tightening his grip on Russia, and the world landscape the Prime Minister and President survey from the Oval Office during the next few days is both gloomy and hazardous. In such circumstances, Mr Cameron and Mr Obama may rightly conclude that good friends are more valuable than ever.