A NEW special relationship based on economics was forged between Gordon Brown and Barack Obama among the sand dunes and beach houses of Cape Cod, New England.

It was there that the brains behind Obama’s economic team became friends many seasons ago with the up-and-coming young shadow chancellor of the exchequer. New Labour was just being created and Brown was eager to learn at the foot of masters who had summer houses there, such as Larry Summers, now head of Obama’s National Economic Council, and Robert Reich, a professor at Berkeley in California and one of Obama’s economic gurus.

There was another connection, too: the two top-flight American economists had taught Brown’s young advisers, Ed Balls and Ed Miliband, at Harvard University. The aides went on to introduce their teachers to their boss. Brown’s idea of holiday fun was to read the latest treatise on economics by Summers and chew over the details with him in person. Brown even took his bride on honeymoon to his summer wonkathon in Cape Cod. This Tuesday, Sarah Brown will have an altogether more stylish get-together with Michelle Obama.

The Browns cannot hope to match the sheer star power that the Obamas have brought to the White House. “Gordon is a much more buttoned-up fellow than Barack. You’d never see him running around with an open collar and no tie, and his wife is much more reserved than Michelle,” said Morris Reid, a Democratic consultant.

At the first formal White House dinner hosted by the Obamas, normally staid governors of states danced to the 1970s band Earth, Wind and Fire. A few days later Stevie Wonder serenaded the first couple at the White House with Isn’t She Lovely and Superstition. “I think it’s fair to say that had I not been a Stevie Wonder fan, Michelle might not have dated me,” Obama joked at an award ceremony for the star.

The Hollywood actor George Clooney dropped by and announced that the president and vice-president had agreed to send a special envoy to the troubled Darfur region of Sudan.

It was more reminiscent of Cool Britannia and the early days of Tony Blair’s premiership in 1997 than Brown’s Cold Comfort Farm. Yet the austere Brown finally has a chance to come into his own. “The new special relationship across the Atlantic is economic,” said a prominent member of the Cape Cod set.

When Blair bonded with George W Bush over the war in Iraq, Brown was left holding all the wrong phone numbers. The then chancellor was supposed to be the pro-American one of the new Labour pair, but his friends were all out of favour. Summers even lost his job as president of Harvard in a row over political correctness.

All those surf-and-study holidays surrounded by policy wonks and Democratic party operatives stretching back 20 years have finally paid off for Brown. Just as the obituaries for the special relationship between Britain and America were being written, Brown has found a new way to catch Obama’s attention: not the war on terror but the global economic crisis.

Instead of rowing over how many troops Britain is willing to send to Afghanistan, Brown will be enjoying a tax-and-spend love-in with Obama and preparing common ground for the April G20 economic summit in London. As a particular mark of favour, the prime minister has been invited to address both Houses of Congress on Wednesday, an honour formerly accorded to Blair at the height of the war in Iraq.

At a time of global financial crisis, social democratic Britain has become a valuable ally and partner again.

Brown has beaten the other European leaders to the White House and will be the first to welcome the new president across the Atlantic at the G20 summit.

When Brown lands in the US, he will be among friends. He not only knows Summers and Reich, but Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, and Timothy Geithner, Obama’s treasury secretary. “Having that kind of direct contact in very relaxed circumstances creates natural feelings of affection,” said a Cape Cod friend of Brown.

There was an unexpected boost for the prime minister when Paul Krugman, the Nobel prize-winning economist, wrote a New York Times column, “Gordon does good”, which praised him for leading the way in bailing out the banks.

“Has Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, saved the world financial system?” he asked.

The celebrations, Krugman acknowledges, may have been premature given the global economy’s downward spiral. “I’m not sure Gordon Brown has got it under control,” he said. “It is not so much a criticism of him as saying, ‘None of us do’. He has clearly got more grasp of the issues and more willingness to take strong action than most.”

The bond between Brown and Obama has some way to go before it matches the alliance between Bush and Blair who, by a quirk of fate, will be speaking at a climate change conference in Congress the day before Brown’s address.

“For Bush, having Tony Blair going along with the invasion of Iraq was a very critical piece of political backing, but there is a clear affinity on economic policy between Britain and the United States and it’s good to have some outreach,” Krugman said.

When the financial world is sinking, it is helpful to have an ally to man the lifeboats with you.

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