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The UK’s obsession with the ‘special relationship’, not Donald Trump, is Theresa May's real problem

France and Germany are better off and enjoy greater freedom of manoeuvre in their transatlantic relations without the burden of a special relationship

Mary Dejevsky
Thursday 30 November 2017 17:50 GMT
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If it were not for the ‘special relationship’, the Prime Minister might not have felt the need to condemn the US President in a public utterance
If it were not for the ‘special relationship’, the Prime Minister might not have felt the need to condemn the US President in a public utterance

For what will turn out to be a brief space, no doubt, Brexit was sidelined by the latest UK-US spasm in the time of Donald Trump. MPs indulged in a veritable orgy of Trump-bashing. The BBC fanned the flames by inviting the American media commentator Ann Coulter on to Radio 4’s Today programme. Asked to follow that, the shadow Foreign Secretary, Emily Thornberry – who seems more and more sensible by the day – sighed theatrically, and said she didn’t know where to start.

Well, I think I do know where to start, and it is not here. It is with the mysterious hold still exerted by the “special relationship” on those who walk our corridors of power. Without that, this media-political storm would never have assumed the proportions it did.

It is true that the various elements of this quarrel are as bad – almost – as they could be: the US President giving mass circulation, via Twitter, to inflammatory anti-Muslim videos; the US President thereby hugely raising the profile of Britain First, the extreme-right outfit that had originally posted the clips; a Prime Minister who was damned if she did and damned if she didn’t express her abhorrence in public; and the US President congenitally unable to leave a criticism unanswered.

Theresa May refuses to tell Trump to stop tweeting

“Don’t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom,” Trump tweeted to Theresa May (getting her Twitter name wrong first time around). It was, Lord Adonis tweeted in turn, perhaps the most “insulting and destructive public communication from a US president to a British prime minister since the American Civil War”. Call in the ambassador, he said.

From there things only became more heated. A torrent of furious Brits demanded once again that the US state visit, already scaled back and postponed, should be expunged from the diary altogether. As for an invitation to the royal wedding – well, there are only so many guests you can fit into St George’s Chapel at Windsor, so that may not have been a runner anyway – but, clearly, if they had any such pretensions, the Trumps should forget it.

With the Prime Minister abroad – sandwiching a trip to Saudi Arabia between Iraq and Jordan – it was Education Secretary Justine Greening (on the media) and Home Secretary Amber Rudd (in the Commons) who were given the unenviable job of telling the country that we should all pretty much lie back and think of the “special relationship” – a relationship so special that no US president, however flaky, and no quarrel, however public, would ever, ever, ever succeed in blowing it off course.

“The UK and US have been longstanding allies and our relationship with America is a hugely important one,” Greening told the BBC, “and I don’t think we should allow this tweet to undermine that in any way.” Rudd advised MPs to remember the importance of the transatlantic alliance and that intelligence-sharing had “undoubtedly saved British lives”: “That is the big picture here, and I would urge people to remember that.”

So, you see, it all comes back to the “special relationship”, and this is really the crux, because if it were not for the “special relationship”, the Prime Minister might not have felt the need to condemn the US President in a public utterance. She could have condemned the videos in public and the President in private – as, in fact, did Boris Johnson. But with a controversial state visit on the cards, and anti-Trump sentiment, in the capital at least, on a seemingly constant high, she had little choice. Then came the backlash from Trump, which was taken far too seriously than it needed to be – we know what Trump is like and how lightly he uses social media, don’t we? – and we really shouldn’t take the hump. But then there was the Prime Minister’s honour to be defended – and that, regrettably, is where we are now.

Is it not beyond time to accept that the UK is an ally of the US, not a special friend? We have parts of our past that are shared, sometimes happily and to mutual benefit, sometimes not. In so far as the special relationship exists at all, it is a lopsided arrangement that allows the UK to fantasise about global power and influence, even as it seeks shelter under the eagle’s wing.

Where there has been anything akin to a special relationship – in intelligence-sharing to a degree (the one asset identified by the Home Secretary) – we might recall Iraq’s non-existent chemical weapons and ask how useful, in recent times, it has really been. That question could be even more pointed, if our intelligence services and ex-spies assisted the electoral anti-Trump efforts (as it would appear).

No wonder UK diplomacy pulled out all the stops to ensure Theresa May became the first foreign leader to visit the White House after Trump’s inauguration. No wonder a state visit to the UK was on the table. Such gestures, however, are of far less consequence to Washington than they are to London, where they help to keep the illusion of “specialness” alive.

France and Germany, it could be argued, are better off and enjoy greater freedom of manoeuvre in their transatlantic relations without the burden of a special relationship. Angela Merkel was free to look glum and talk about defending European values on her (relatively late) visit to see the new President. Emmanuel Macron has played a diplomatic blinder since he came to office.

Almost his first move was to entertain (and criticise) Russia’s Vladimir Putin amid the splendours of Versailles. His next – having fixed the US President with an uncompromising handshake on their first encounter – was to host Donald Trump and Melania at the Bastille Day parade, and before that to dinner at the Eiffel Tower. France is now on first-name terms, and in diplomatic credit, with the leaders of Russia and the United States, without any nonsense about state banquets, addresses to Parliament, upholding national dignity – or, indeed, the “specialness” of the relationship.

It is unfortunate that the UK seems to be finding it so hard to deal with the US, given that this is a time when it needs friends, especially big, powerful friends, the most. But until this country drops its sense of entitlement towards Washington – and learns how to deal more adroitly with a President for whom social media is one, but only one, tool of communication – it could be hard to prevent this suddenly difficult relationship getting worse.

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