The special relationship that wasn't

New Statesman​

4 days ago

Photo by Tolga Akmen/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images
What a week for Britain's 'special relationship'. Keir Starmer headed to Scotland to sit in near silence at a press conference with President Trump, as the US leader attacked implicitly or overtly his policies on energy and tax as well as tearing apart his 'friend' the mayor of London. Starmer delayed his announcement on the recognition of a Palestinian state until his visit was over. Unlike Macron, Starmer's declaration came with conditions attached, partly in the hope of staying as close as possible to Trump. Even now No 10 hopes to be a 'bridgehead' between the US and the countries recognising a Palestinian state. Starmer's moves are made with the US in mind.
Why do so many prime ministers set such store by the so-called 'special relationship' with the US? They seek out the presidential embrace, while aware of the darkness that swamped their predecessors who did the same.
One of the great posthumous commentators on contemporary politics is the former foreign secretary, Robin Cook – a figure with whom I suspect Starmer would have had considerable affinity in his former role as a human rights lawyer. In Cook's diaries, published in his book, The Point of Departure, the then cabinet minister exposed brilliantly the shallow evasiveness of the 'bridgehead' role: 'Tony Blair's favourite image of Britain's relationship with the US is that we are its bridge to Europe…The concept of a bridge is perfectly tailored for New Labour as a bridge cannot make choices, but by definition is in the middle'.
The observation is illuminating on many levels. In some respects, Starmer has been unfairly criticised for lacking the clear sense of purpose and direction possessed by Blair on all fronts. It was Cook's view, at least, that Blair also avoided hard choices until he had to make them. At which point he went for the least daunting option. When he was forced to choose between Europe and the US over Iraq, he sided with President George Bush, with the full support of the Tory leadership and Conservative newspapers – his comfort zone. When the war went horribly wrong a lot of the fickle admirers turned on him. The special relationship did not lead to a comfort zone for Blair.
It never does for British prime ministers. When Clement Attlee won in 1945 the country was broke and urgently needed huge investment in public services, as it does now. Attlee found a way of raising the cash by negotiating a loan with the US, Britain's recent wartime ally. The terms Attlee secured were brutally punitive for the UK and hugely beneficial to the US. It is the reason why Britain's change making Labour government lasted nowhere near as long as the Conservative's equivalent elected in 1979 – the toll taken on the economy was great, as Attlee and his colleagues addressed the huge costs of repaying the loan.
A deeply divided Labour Party was in opposition for 13 years after losing the 1951 election. A main source of the division was Attlee's final attempts to reassure the US on its ambitions for defence spending. Attlee greatly increased expenditure on arms. The party split over the introduction of prescription charges to pay for some of the spending. Fast forward to now: what services will be hit as the current government meets its plans to increase defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP, partly to please Trump?
A few years after Attlee left No 10, Anthony Eden became the next prime minister to fall, partly over assumptions about the US. When Egypt's President Gamal Abdel Nasser seized the Suez Canal, Eden's immediate instinct was to respond with force. He was a brief hero for the summer of 1956, as he outlined his plans for war. By the end of the summer President Dwight Eisenhower made it clear he would not back Eden. The British prime minister was taken aback but dared to hope for neutrality from his partner in Washington. Eisenhower was not neutral. He opposed the prime minister's military plan. The then chancellor, Harold Macmillan, also discovered that the US would hit the fragile British economy if Eden went ahead.
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Without the US, he could not do so. He was gone by January of the following a year, a fall in some ways more dramatic than that of Liz Truss. Eden could not survive after his misplaced faith in the special relationship destroyed him.
After this, British foreign policy became a little more realistic. Macmillan had seen first hand that the US could not be relied on. He sought and failed to join what was then the Common Market. In the 1960s, Harold Wilson also tried to sign up, again without success. But he demonstrated Britain could be independent of the US when he did not offer military support in Vietnam. President Lyndon B Johnson was furious, but Wilson held his ground. The current government's ministerial historian, Nick Thomas-Symonds, cites Wilson's decision as the bravest foreign policy move of any Labour prime minister. Wilson's successor, Edward Heath, was not remotely bothered by the special relationship, and instead negotiated Britain's membership of the Common Market.
As with domestic policy, Margaret Thatcher changed all assumptions. Her friendship with President Ronald Reagan was part of her image as the Iron Lady, bestriding the world stage. In the 1980s Blair and Gordon Brown watched her on a TV screen in their cramped shared office as she was feted in Washington. In contrast their leader, Neil Kinnock, was treated dismissively when he made to the US. Blair concluded that a Labour leader could never win elections if at odds with a US president. The seeds of Iraq were sown in the 1980s. But there was a twist. When Thatcher turned to Reagan for support at the start of the Falklands War he hesitated. Even when the 'special relationship' was based on genuine rapport, Reagan did not deliver when Thatcher needed him.
There are good reasons to want the special relationship to work. Intelligence sharing is of mutual interest. The US has agency and economic might as no other. When it is possible to work with presidents it is obviously best to do so. But why do so many prime ministers, with the exception of Macmillan, Wilson and Heath, become victims of their hunger to be at one with the US, whatever the circumstances and characters in the White House?
Part of the answer lies in Britain's equivocal attitude to Europe. Another has to do with the sheer glamour as prime ministers head for the White House compared to, say, the hard grind of an EU summit. For Labour prime ministers being 'shoulder to shoulder' with a US president is a short term way of getting approval from right wing British newspapers. But they do not dare to see that the 'special relationship' traps them as they move knowingly towards their political incarceration.
[See also: A Trump shaped elephant]
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