USA + UK: IT’S NOT LOVE, ACTUALLY
SHOULD BRITAIN KEEP ITS ‘SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP’ WITH TRUMP’S AMERICA?
I am well aware that UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is not Hugh Grant.
And Donald Trump certainly isn’t Billy Bob Thornton.
But when the debating society I’m a member of notified me about the motion for our next event, I couldn’t help thinking of the scene in the movie Love Actually in which Grant’s British PM stands up to the bullying of Thornton’s American President.
Our debate in London is about whether the UK government should maintain its so-called “special relationship” with the United States during the Donald Trump presidency.
So I’ve been thinking about that question. Obviously, the UK and the U.S. are going to continue to have an important relationship over the next four years, whether it’s called “special” or not.
Trump and Starmer have both spoken warmly about each other so far, despite the fact that Trump’s tech buddy Elon Musk has been trolling the British Prime Minister on his social media platform “X”.
But I don’t recall either Trump or Starmer explicitly calling it “the special relationship” since the U.S. election. They are due to meet this month, and somebody is going to ask them the “special relationship” question.
In Love Actually, there’s a news conference after a Presidential visit to Downing Street in which Billy Bob Thornton’s President is asked whether it’s been a successful trip.
“We got what we came for and our special relationship is still very special,” he declares.
But Grant’s PM causes a sensation when he says: “I fear it has become a bad relationship, based on the President taking everything that he wants, and casually ignoring all those things which really matter to Britain.
“We may be a small country, but we’re a great one too — a country of Shakespeare, Churchill, The Beatles, Sean Connery, Harry Potter, and David Beckham’s right foot….”
“A friend who bullies us is no longer a friend,” he goes on to say.
OK, it’s a comedy from the pen of Richard Curtis, and nothing like real life or real politics!
But it is also true that Donald Trump is exactly the kind of President who will throw his weight around on the world stage in order to get what he wants.
We’ve seen it already with his antagonism towards Denmark for having the audacity to want to keep hold of Greenland, by his interventions regarding the Panama Canal, by emasculating America’s aid programmes around the world, and by threatening to impose aggressive tariffs on goods from Mexico, Canada and China.
Mexico and Canada have now been put into a 30 day reprieve on the tariffs because both countries agreed to beef up border security with thousands of troops to crack down on illegal drugs and crime.
Trump has also threatened tariffs on the EU. He seems determined to start a trade war if people don’t concede to whatever demands he makes. Mexico and Canada blinked.
A trade war is in nobody’s interests. It’s a war where somebody punches someone else on the nose, then more people punch each other on the nose, and everyone involved ends up bleeding.
One of Trump’s economic advisers, Stephen Moore, has already said that he thinks the administration would be less interested in a free trade deal with the UK if Starmer decides to move more towards what Moore described as an EU “socialist” model.
So Downing Street is preparing to conduct a cordial and mutually beneficial relationship with the U.S., while not abandoning Starmer’s desire to pursue a closer trading ties with the EU. He’s right to explore that because Europe is Britain’s biggest export market.
The special relationship with the United States has its roots in colonialism. After all, even in 1783 when Britain finally accepted American independence, the vast majority of white people who were fighting for that independence had originated from Britain itself.
But the forging of that modern special relationship happened as a result of the Second World War, when Britain, the United States and other allies defeated Nazi Germany.
British war-time Prime Minister Winston Churchill was the first to use the phrase. Harry Truman was President at the time the war was won in 1945, having taken over after the death of Roosevelt early that year. Their very good relationship was founded on winning a war together.
Whether the special relationship is in good health has always been something of an obsession among British diplomats, ministers, and even journalists who always like to ask about it. It’s because that connection gives the UK some advantages and status that other allies don’t have.
The UK enjoys very strong diplomatic influence in Washington and a high level of access to secret intelligence and military systems, and Britain is the eyes and ears for the U.S. in parts of the world the Americans have no representation, such as Iran.
The United States and the UK co-operate militarily all over the world. There are joint military bases in Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, and at RAF Akrotiri, in Cyprus. The U.S. military also has a communications hub for its airforce at a British base in Northamptonshire.
That’s the special relationship whirring away in the background. But I think the outward manifestation of it very much depends on the bonds between individuals.
Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher definitely embodied the spirit of the special relationship. They were political soul mates and the two most prominent leaders of the western world through most of the 1980s.
But a strong relationship doesn’t mean you have to agree on everything.
In the early 1980s, Thatcher was not supportive of the American invasion of Grenada, and Reagan wasn’t happy about her decision to go to war with Argentina after they invaded the Falklands Islands, a British territory in the South Atlantic. But these differences didn’t annul the transatlantic union.
Thatcher once called the former Hollywood actor “the second most important man in my life,” which was a demonstration of the bond between them. Her description of Reagan also sounded like good news for her husband Denis!
In the late 1990s, there was a strong bond between Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. They liked each other, and had a similar political outlook.
But counterintuitively, the most significant relationship came later, between Blair, as a Labour Prime Minister and President George W. Bush, a Republican President. It was 9/11 which brought them together.
This led to the war against Afghanistan, which the UK supported, after the Taliban refused to stop harbouring Osama bin Laden.
“We’ve got no better friend in the world than Great Britain,” declared Bush.
The strength of the relationship manifested itself in Blair’s belief that Britain needed to stand shoulder to shoulder with the USA in invading Iraq in 2003. The aim was to rid the country of Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction.
Saddam was deposed, but no WMD was ever found, and the long-term consequences of that invasion were disastrous.
There’s no doubt that working together on a consequential enterprise can form bonds between people, but the “special relationship” doesn’t guarantee good outcomes.
Interestingly, the Love Actually movie in which the Hugh Grant character refuses to be the U.S. President’s poodle, was released in 2003, at a time when there was a lot of unease among many people in the UK about warmongering alongside the Americans.
Barack Obama and David Cameron are an example of where the special relationship came under strain. Obama was not happy with Cameron’s actions over Libya, and he counted Angela Merkel of Germany as the most important leader in Europe.
Donald Trump 1.0 and British PM Theresa May were not really a match made in heaven, either. He once said that his relationship with her was “the highest level of special”.
But though they may have looked like a married couple when Trump insisted on holding her hand as they walked together at the White House, the closeness wasn’t real.
He saw her as being weak over Brexit, and I’m pretty sure she found him somewhat insufferable without ever saying so.
When Boris Johnson became Prime Minister in 2019, that was much more to Trump’s liking. Trump once referred to him as “Britain Trump”, and for better or worse, there were certainly similarities of approach.
I can’t begin to predict how the Trump-Starmer relationship will play out, simply because Trump’s quick fire decision-making is so unpredictable.
He could be a threat to Britain, he could be a friend to Britain.
But what we know for sure is that the 47th President’s relationships are likely to be transactional, rather than based on historic ties and traditions.
So Starmer would do well to be transactional too, and not get bullied into turning his face entirely towards the Atlantic and away from continental Europe. And he shouldn’t overreact to Trump’s more controversial actions and policies in the United States. Save it for matters which have an effect on the UK.
Politically, there are risks in trying to ride two horses at once. But the UK needs both a strong relationship with Europe and with America.
The so-called special relationship exists at another level to the one on the surface presented by transitory Presidents and Prime Ministers. The military, intelligence and diplomatic co-operation is likely to endure, even if sparks fly between the politicians.
The true strength of the relationship is that it’s an enduring one between the nations, and it transcends the connection between the people who happen to be the leaders at any one moment.
Starmer will likely want to focus on doing whatever is the right thing for Britain, actually.
And if Trump goes all Billy Bob Thornton on him, Starmer might want to channel his inner Hugh Grant!