End the illusion: ditch the UK's "special relationship" with the USA
We have lots of reasons to do this AND they go far beyond the latest antics of Donald Trump and his tariff tyranny. The danger of war is one.
Cover photo: Just after World War 1 ended, this poster was issued showing Britannia arm-in-arm with Uncle Sam.
By Alan Story
Amid last week’s Trump tariff turmoil, were YOU thinking what I was thinking?
During a typical vainglorious speech on Tuesday night to fellow Republicans in Washington and just before he made two spectacular retreats over tariffs in the next 72 hours, the US president said global leaders were “dying to make a deal (with the USA). 'Please, please sir, make a deal. I’ll do anything sir,' he imitated a begging foreign leader,” reported POLITICO.
And then came his punch line: “I am telling you; these countries are calling us up, kissing my ass.”
My immediate thought: Had Keir Starmer been first in line?
We learned the next day that Starmer had not, in fact, talked to Trump for some time. Instead, Starmer was present that same day for the announcement by US movie giant Universal Studios that it was planning to open a multi-billion-dollar theme park near Bedford in 2031. And thus, he was able to hear his chancellor, Rachel Reeves, declare that this project symbolised the close ties between the UK and US.
A DEAL GONE BADLY SOUR
As the weekend approached, it also became clear that Trump's tariffying world offensive had been not the art of the steal, as Trump intended it to be. Rather, it was the art of a deal that had gone sour badly, after the second strongest superpower, China, told Trump to get stuffed. Starmer remained mute.
As an aside: the idea, spread by Trump's own awe-struck handlers, that the mid-week collapse of his original tariff plans was merely a pre-planned “bargaining strategy” shows how deluded the most powerful politician in the world clearly is.
Moreover, as the UK was handed precisely the same tariff deal as other US trading partners, our much-touted “special relationship” with the strongest imperial superpower in the world was exposed as a cruel myth. Again! And for at least the hundredth time in the past decade.
Mind you, the special relationship which Starmer and Reeves promote mirrors those of a lengthy list of past prime ministers: Thatcher / Reagan (1981-1989); Blair with both Clinton and George W. Bush (1997 -2007), and Johnson/ Trump (2019 to 2017). (For those who may have forgotten: Trump endorsed Johnson in the 2019, calling him “Britain’s Trump.” Thanks Donald.)
Starmer is acting in an even more sycophantic and downright craven way towards Trump than did former PM Teresa May, hardly an international disrupter. In December 2017, she at least criticised Trump for his decision to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Since he was elected in July 2024, Starmer has definitely kissed the ass of Netanyahu, Biden, AND Trump over Israeli’s genocidal war on the Palestinians.
We need, however, to look beyond the particulars of the Trump-Starmer love in to ask: is it not time to ditch the so-called special relationship between the United Kingdom and the United States?
“THE WORLD HAS CHANGED”
Yes, “the world has changed,” as both Starmer and Reeves prattle on about incessantly. Changing our relationship, even minimally, with the USA would be a small start. (See below for three suggestions.)
In a Wikipedia item stretching over 61 A4 pages, an entry termed simply “special relationship” says it is a term that describes ten dimensions linking the UK and US or its political leaders: “ political, social, diplomatic, cultural, economic, legal, environmental, religious, military, and historic relations” between the two countries. There is no doubt of its significance since it was coined as a phrase by Winston Churchill in 1946.
Yet as Scott Lucas, a politics professor at the University of Birmingham commented in 2017: “the special relationship has always been a PR device which has been used primarily by the British because the British have needed the Americans more than the Americans have needed the Brits at a high level.”
Added a former UK diplomat, “the British danger…is you are seen to have been the poodle rather than the candid friend… ” and that the term special “… is prone to ridicule when the reality does not match the rhetoric.”
To which most progressives in the UK would reply:
“Who wants to be ‘a candid friend’ with one of the most violent and imperialist countries of all time, domestically and globally?”
And “doesn’t the latest tariff row make the phrase ‘special relationship’ an object of ridicule?”
So, what is the relationship between the US and the UK, special or otherwise? More precisely, what is the function of the UK for the US and its empire.
The book cover of a 2024 expose called “Vassal State”. ( Swift Press)
First, the United States is the largest source of foreign direct investment to the UK. US corporations have vast control over “what we're paid, what we buy, and how we buy it” as a 2024 expose, THE VASSAL STATE, puts it.
Explains author Angus Hanton: “Boots, Costa Coffee, Cadburys: they’re all American-owned.” (Watch this interview with Politics JOE.) Adds a blurb on the cover: “U.S. companies have carved up Britain between them, syphoning off enormous profits, buying up our most lucrative firms and assets, and extracting huge rents from UK PLC- all while paying little or no tax.”
But it would be a serious mistake to see the UK as some kind of colony of the US. The UK is also the single largest foreign direct investor in the US. The analysis from this 2006 article is a bit dated, but Britian is not an economic poodle of US interests. So, the two countries are interconnected, and the City of London is closely linked to both US and UK capitalist interests.
Second, there are a number of linguistic and cultural ties between the two countries. Without doubt and especially because of the Internet, US cultural interests or soft power have been much more influential in the UK than vice versa for many decades. Social media, for example, is primarily a one-way street. So, we are now mostly a market for US cultural products.
Politically there are also many ties and similarities. Both countries are primarily under the control of a two-party system and both use an archaic and undemocratic first-past-the-post voting system, although of diverse types. (Believe it or not, but the US system is even more undemocratic than ours!) In addition to money, US-based right wing think tanks provide much of the ideological “artillery” that is fired by the likes of Nigel Farage and Kemi Babenoch on this side of the Atlantic. At international bodies such as the UN, the US and the UK often vote the same way. There are some similarities in the legal systems, although, thank goodness, we do not give citizens the right to bear arms as some kind of constitutional hangover from the 1770s.
We could go for some paragraphs, but won’t.
Militarily, the US and the UK have often been partners. Squadrons of US bombers and fighter aircraft are based on UK soil. For the first time in two decades, US nuclear weapons are to be housed in Suffolk at RAF Lakenheath, not far from where I (and millions of other people) live.
The UK did manage to stay out of the war in Vietnam in the 1960s, but the two countries joined forces in the illegal war in Iraq 20 years ago and in the war in Afghanistan.
WHAT IS TRUMP’S PLAN FOR IRAN?
Who knows what Trump has in mind for Iran? Here are the first two chilling paragraphs of a recent news story:
“WASHINGTON, April 9 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday repeated his threat to use military force if Iran did not agree to end its nuclear program, saying Israel would play a key role in any military action.
Trump said Iran could not be allowed to have a nuclear weapon and if it declined to stop development efforts, military action could follow.”
Would the UK become an international partner, along with Israel and Saudi Arabia of course, in some type of Trump-initiated new Middle East war in upcoming months or years? Is a new “coalition of willing”, the same name used for Iraq, on the cards?
This past and current US-UK military collaboration is particularly worrisome in the current situation in which we seem poised to be entering a set of global trade wars at Trump’s instigation.
Trade wars often escalate a number of factors, such as economic tensions, increased nationalist pressures, competition over resources, and new alliances and rivalries which, as a result of miscalculations and misunderstandings, can lead to a shooting war.
Just this week, Trump said he supports raising the total annual U.S. military budget from US$ 892 billion in the current fiscal year to a record sum of roughly US $ 1trillion. That works out to £2941.00 per year for every man, woman and child in the USA. “Nobody's seen anything like it,” Trump bragged on 8 April.
The number of trade wars is also escalating. During the entire 20th century, there were only seven trade wars. Since the 21st century began 25 years ago, there have been a record of 24 trade wars. The US has been a party in a majority of them.
Trump has created China as America’s) main enemy. A recent survey revealed that “China had the largest armed forces in the world by active-duty military personnel, with about 2 million active soldiers.”
Given how rapidly Starmer upped the UK’s military budget in response to Trump’s recent demand, disagreeing with Trump does not seem to be in Starmer’s genetic make-up.
In fact, there have been at least five occasions since Trump assumed the presidency on 20 January where a modestly liberal UK government could have raised an objection to what Trump has done or threatened to do.
Trump said his “solution” in Gaza was to flatten it and then turn it into a Riviera-style resort on the Mediterranean. Starmer was mute.
Trump belittled Canada, a fellow member of the UK in the Commonwealth (if that means anything), insultingly dubbed Canada the 51st state, called its Prime Minister a “Governor”, and hinted at military action to take it over. Starmer was mute.
TRUMP: “ I WANT GREENLAND”
Trump and his vice president JD Vance also have their eye on taking over Greenland from Denmark. Such an act would be totally against international law and the rights of its mainly Indigenous people. Starmer, a human rights lawyer, was mute.
Internationally, Trump decided the US will leave the World Health Organisation ( which strips away 1/5 of its budget), dropped the US out of the Paris Climate Agreement, aims to increase US production and consumption of fossil fuels, and his cutbacks to US environmental regulations will seriously impact the whole world, including the UK. Starmer was mute.
The whopping cutbacks in foreign aid by the richest country in the world will mean certain death to many in the global South. Starmer was mute, and slashed UK foreign aid himself.
Meanwhile, David Lammy has proved to be a notably weak and ineffective foreign secretary. I suppose that is not surprising when it seems that Starmer has given Donald Trump trumping power over any UK foreign policy announcements that might imply it criticism of Trump. Lammy was even forced to withdraw a minor rebuke of Israel.
In summary, this is the sad state to where our special relationship with the United States has led us. It is not a special relationship; it is an abusive marriage.
THREE SUGGESTIONS FOR CHANGES
As long as the UK remains both a capitalist and imperialist nation itself and as long as the UK remains a member of NATO, there are severe limits as to what the UK can do to reduce its ties with the United States and to limit its integration into the American empire.
Hence, the three suggestions below are actually quite minimal demands:
1) Cancel Trump's invitation for a state visit to the UK. We should be doing all we can to support his opponents in America and cancelling his state visit would be a global slap in the face. Such a step would be much appreciated by his internal opponents, especially by the American working class and progressive forces generally who, in the end, will suffer the most from this misrule and who also have the best chance of ending it.
2) A socialist foreign policy would call for the UK’s withdrawal from NATO. Such a demand is not capable of being realised in the current circumstances and balance of political forces. But it is realistic and hardly revolutionary to make two demands in relation to the Israeli war of genocide against the Palestinians…and which the US government backs with no qualms. a) Immediately cease sending all UK-made weapons to Israel; b) Prohibit US, Israeli or RAF forces from using RAF bases, such as the RAF base in nearby Cyprus, to launch surveillance missions over Gaza or the West Bank. This is an issue taken up below in an open letter being circulated by Jeremy Corbyn.
An open letter launched by MP Jeremy Corbyn and circulating among MPs. Why not ask your MP to sign it?
3) Adequate control and regulation of predominantly US-owned social media platforms is proving impossible. They are under the total control of far right sympathisers such as Elon Musk and are stepping up their censorship, as documented in this Drop Note News investigation titled: “ Leaked Data Reveals Massive Israeli Campaign to Remove Pro-Palestine Posts on Facebook and Instagram.” Such platform do little to prevent the posting of pornographic messages and messages filled with racism and hatred. As a first step to creating an alternative, the government should fund a task force to figure out how to establish a government-owned and user-controlled social media system that would be capable of taking on the big boys and ending their monopoly.
Addendum:
I just read an article that said a group of US political scientists had selected Trump as the “worst US president in history” …. and that was in February 2024, many months before the November 2024 elections and the current trade war turbulence.
In this turmoil, Trump has just “met his maker” in the bond market, concludes economics commentator Brian Green. (Worth subscribing to ‘The Planning Motive.’)
In a video and words, two well-regarded commentors discuss how the US is an empire in decline.
Donald Trump, now aged 78, is almost certain to get worse as a president - and become increasingly unstable - between now and January 2029 when he is slated to step down as president, that is, if he lasts that long.
It is time to cut as many links as possible with his increasingly depraved and, to be blunt, downright sick empire.
CHECK THIS OUT
THE “WRONG KIND OF JEW”
This article in the Middle East Eye on the weekend details how a Jewish person overturned his explusion from the Labour Party for alleged anti-semitism. The real reason he was kicked out? He was the “ wrong kind of Jew”. (Thanks to my mate Mat for this.)
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/jewish-man-wins-case-against-uk-labour-antisemitism-expulsion
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Edited by Alan Story, THE LEFT LANE is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber: http://theleftlane2024.substack.com/subscribe
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