I wonder why it had to be a public announcement? Couldn’t ithave been done some other way?
That’s a very good question. It may be just standard diplomat talk that wasn’t expected to make much of a stir but was picked up by a newspaper who wanted to play the “how dare the US tell us what to do” angle. OTOH, it seems to have been a very considered and deliberately made statement. I would guess that by announcing it very publically the US was trying to reinforce their message, which implies they have had a whiff of a potential change in British attitudes to Europe and they want to make it clear that they like things the way they are, thank you very much. It is certainly true that disillusion with the EU and especially the Eurozone is at an all time high in Britain, with anti-EU parties storming ahead in opinion polls. Maybe the US sees a major shift in European Politics coming up.