Mary Dejevsky is the chief editorial writer and a columnist at The Independent. She has a very distinguished career where she has worked across the world as a foreign correspondent and is one the UK’s most respected commentators on the US, the EU and Russia. Mary was formerly the Washington Bureau Chief for the Independent and, in anticipation of our US Election Preview event on 29 February, has offered G2G an insight into how she envisages the race for Republican nomination the White House panning out.  

Sam Cranston: The Republican primary race has been a fascinating spectacle. Whilst there is no candidate that stirs emotions as much as Barack Obama in 2008, the twists and turns of the initial primary contest has meant that there is still no clear Republican nominee. Who do you envisage will be on the Republican ticket in November?

Mary Dejevsky: I really don’t know because Mitt Romney looked the favourite by miles but I always felt that being a Mormon was going to be more of a liability nationally than many appreciated. It was tolerated in the North East, because this is a more secular and business orientated region and he had a record of managerial competence there. But it is clearly a liability in the South as Newt Gingrich beat him easily in South Carolina and in the Midwest where it seems Romney wasn’t conservative enough. Of course, there is the perennial contradiction that the most electable candidate in the primaries may not be the most electable in the election proper where the candidate has to track to the centre. So polls show Romney would do much better against Obama than other Republicans. I don’t think Rick Santorum can be ruled out though.

SC: You were the Washington Bureau Chief for the Independent during President Clinton’s second term. In 2008 Barack Obama promised hope and change under the banner of ‘Yes we can’. Do you think he has delivered on those promises and done enough to win himself a second term?

MD: I think he has because although he hasn’t delivered anything like universal healthcare and has failed to close Guantanamo, he can claim to have extended access to health insurance within the bounds of what is possible in the US, he has got US troops out of Iraq and is preparing to bring them out of Afghanistan – and that is not nothing. If he is really lucky, too, the economy could start to look up quite convincingly by November. I have also seen surveys that suggest US voters are actually less polarised now than they have been in the last couple of presidential elections and that the Tea Party is past its prime.

SC: And finally, what relationship do you envisage Britain having with the United States over the next decade and how much of an impact would a change in administration be on that relationship?

MD: I think the relationship will remain quite low key, but stable, as it mostly has been since Obama took office. I never shared the view that a Democrat in the White House would automatically improve relations with Britain and Obama seems to have treated Britain as one aspect of US Europe policy without a lot of the nostalgia even George W. Bush seemed to show. Obama has also started to shift the US strategic direction quite decisively towards Asia, leaving Europe pretty much to its own devices. I doubt this would change with a Republican in the White House, though they might take longer over the re-orientation begun by Obama and therefore look more interested for longer in Europe.

You can read Mary’s column at The Independent by clicking here