Oil leak tension between Britain and US spills over

What started as an oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico in late April has threatened to become a stain on relations between Britain and the US.

While Barack Obama’s US administration last week denied that the disastrous oil spill had damaged relations, it has caused early difficulties for the new British prime minister, David Cameron. With reports that the broken BP pipe is leaking twice as much oil as initially thought, the president and the American people are desperate to find someone to blame.

What Cameron described as an ‘‘environmental catastrophe’’ could also turn out to be a political disaster. There is certainly great political and public anger directed towards BP. A ‘‘seize BP’’ campaign is conducting demonstrations in major US cities, calling on Obama’s government to grab the British company’s US assets, while a ‘‘boycott BP’’ group is encouraging consumers to shun the oil company’s network of service stations

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