The 'Special Relationship' is over

You cannot cultivate a relationship with the political equivalent of the Sword of Damocles.

Since the end of the Second World War, which marks its eightieth anniversary this year, the United Kingdom has enjoyed a long period of deepening friendship and bilateral relations with our more powerful cousins in the United States. For better or for worse, that time has now come to an end.

I’ve been afforded a rather unique perspective on President Musk and Vice President Trump’s commitment to the wholesale immolation of American influence and prestige on the world stage. I’m a born-and-bred British citizen, who has been a resident in Canada for over two years now, with an American wife and stepchild a stone’s throw across the border. I’ve been able to view the situation through three different lenses, and none of them are good.

My wife and stepchild both want out of the US entirely, not just for reasons of vehement disagreement with Trump’s policies, but because his and Musk’s callous and inhumane approach to human rights, healthcare, benefits, and education are now legitimately threatening their safety and prosperity. Like millions of decent-minded Americans, they feel discarded and terrorised by a political class completely apathetic to their concerns at best, and bearing a malevolent will to crush them underfoot at worst.

In less than a month, illegal immigrant and Sieg Heil-throwing manchild Elon Musk has virtually destroyed once-proud US domestic institutions, while JD Vance, another in a long line of browbeaten cowardly Republican men (who some claim is actually the Vice President?), has been doing his level best to permanently destroy trust in America overseas in tandem with the alcohol-sodden, credibly accused rapist Pete Hegseth. With the very legitimate risk that America will not have free and fair elections come 2028, and given how much damage has been done in just a month, it is no longer practicable or humane to suggest anyone just ride out the next four painfully long and rough years, then elect a Democrat to repair the damage. For them, America is now a dream left behind. All that remains is an increasingly capricious authoritarian oligarchy.

If any country has felt stabbed in the back by the new regime, it’s Canada. Across the border, if there is one thing I have learned about my adopted home country, it’s that the international stereotype of Canadian politeness should never be mistaken for weakness. Canadians do not feel aggrieved by Trump; they are seething with righteous anger. The feelings of betrayal are palpable. If George W. Bush’s America was akin to a brother who starts a fight with the neighbours, who after eight years manages to start putting himself back on track, then Trump’s America is learning the same brother just tried robbing your house, sent threatening messages to everyone in your family, and is now saying you’d be better off if you signed over ownership of your home to him.

Trump’s actions have seen a massive surge in Canadian patriotism; Canadians are boycotting US goods, selling their second homes, and abandoning their American holiday plans; the Conservative Party, which hitherto enjoyed enormous poll leads of 20 to 25 points over their Liberal rivals, have collapsed and are now statistically tied against a Liberal Party that hasn’t even elected a new leader yet; calls to divest Canada’s economy from America have started sounding; and some have even suggested Canada join the European Union. At sports games, the US national anthem, which at its absolute worst would have been met with polite silence by Canadians, is now loudly booed, while they in turn belt out ‘O, Canada’ with such vigour that they drown out the voice of the actual singer. The latter has even occurred in Quebec. QUEBEC.

Trump’s actions have been so heinous, they have made Quebec patriotic. For any readers from my home country who may be confused by this, think of what must be required to get the entirety of the Scottish National Party to clad themselves in Union Jacks while belting out ‘God Save The King’, after hanging pictures of His Majesty in their homes. I too have been swept away in the surge of national pride, so much so that the part of me that bore the impulse to defend the country that has treated me with such generosity has now morphed into proto-Canadianism. I find myself thinking of Canada as my country just as much as I do the United Kingdom. Like the Quebecers, it’s no mean feat to imbue within a dyed-in-the-wool Englishman a proud feeling of genuine patriotism and affection for another country.

Which brings me neatly to my home country. While Canadians have had a sharp wake-up call to the realities of what it means to have your closest ally and trading partner hijacked by technocratic fascists, we in Europe seem, yet again, to be slow to turn off the alarm and get out of bed. Instead, we just keep hitting snooze and labouring under the wistful delusion that Trump can be made to see sense. Seeing news that Prime Minister Keir Starmer has sent Peter Mandelson to cultivate a “close relationship” with Trump just makes you want to bang your head against the wall. On the one hand, I get it, sending one former Jeffrey Epstein associate to deal with another seems like an idea that could work, perhaps they could bond over old times or something, but any such effort requires the admission that one considers Trump a faithful actor, when he has proven for decades he is anything but.

Trump is a pathetically weak, narcissistic, egotistical bully; a convicted criminal with no fewer than 34 felonies; an adjudicated rapist; a man so bereft of intelligence and perspective that he couldn’t pour water from a boot with the instructions written on the sole. I get the impression Trump is a man who marvels at the sharp wit of those turkeys who allegedly drown in the rain by looking straight up at the sky. Like a moth to a flame, Trump’s weak insecurity is attracted to the perceived strength of dictators like Putin, Jinping, and Jong Un, which is why he immediately resembles a hunchbacked emasculated whipped dog whenever he walks in their presence.

Above all, Trump is fundamentally dishonest and unfaithful. He views every deal and interaction as a purely one-way transaction, in which he is the sole beneficiary. You cannot cultivate a trusting bilateral relationship with the political equivalent of the Sword of Damocles. It is boneheaded to even think it could be successful and abrogates all good sense to try.

On the one hand, I understand the impulse; you want to smooth relations as much as possible. However, if dealing with Putin has taught us anything, it is that autocrats do not respond to escalation management. They view that as weakness, a perceived inability or unwillingness for a target to stand up for itself. Has any schoolyard bully ever been appeased by saying you’ll share your lunch money with them? Bullies only respond to strength, because the only thing a bully desires is a quick fight that achieves them rapid victory. They do not have the sophistication or coolness of intellect to fight a protracted one, which is why Russia’s genocidal war in Ukraine has brought their own state to the brink of collapse.

Reports of trying to smooth relations with the States by sending His Majesty on a ‘charm offensive’ should be utilised not as some vain attempt to “renormalise” relations with what is effectively a compromised nation, but to lubricate the off-ramp as we seek alternative relationships.

Let’s face it, the “Special Relationship” has always been rather lopsided. During the Bush era, it was perceived by many on both sides of the pond as being a case of “Washington says ‘jump’, and London asks, ‘how high?’” Many on both sides derisively viewed Britain as the 51st State, with all of its institutions acting merely as an outgrowth of American foreign policy. However, now is the perfect time to end the “Special Relationship”, and cultivate friendships with more reliable allies, a decision not just impelled by Trump’s unreliability.

Britain made its final payment on its World War II debts to the United States on 31 December 2006. Our debt to America has long since been repaid. When the United States was attacked in 2001, NATO Article 5, the alliance’s mutual defence clause, was invoked for the first time, and America’s NATO allies answered. Despite massive protests, a majority of Britons at the time supported standing by our American allies, and subsequently 457 British troops were killed in Afghanistan, along with a further 179 in Iraq. Our debt has also been figuratively repaid, this time in blood.

Yet when Europe was attacked by Russia, the United States under the leadership of Joe Biden, and the Grima Wormtongue-esque whisperings of his spineless security advisor Jake Sullivan, did not immediately rush to guarantee the security of Europe, despite promising to do so, but instead indulged in repeated failures in so-called “escalation management”. Red lines were set by Russia, those red lines were eventually crossed, and, predictably, Russia did nothing.

Despite this, calls for no-fly zones went unanswered. Efforts by the UK and France to send long-range weaponry to Ukraine and green light them for use on Russian soil were routinely hamstrung by the Biden administration. The US did everything it could to get out of supplying Ukraine with modern tanks and fighter jets, efforts that were instead spearheaded by the UK, and the Netherlands-Denmark respectively.

To date, the US has sent only 31 Abrams tanks, far fewer than Australia’s 49, despite having some 4,800 in service. It hasn’t sent a single F-16; instead, the pledged amount of 111 jets came from Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, and Greece, despite the US having some 841 F-16s in service. While American military support was of course absolutely crucial in allowing Ukraine to successfully absorb the impact of Russia’s onslaught, a growing feeling of suspicion suggested that, even under a Democratic administration, America was not particularly enthusiastic in helping Ukraine win, or helping to guarantee the security of its allies.

It should be noted that this absolutely does not absolve European inaction. European defence budgets have, for decades, been woefully inadequate, cut to the bone to cash in on the mythical “peace dividend” that came after the Cold War. European nations like Germany happily guzzled down cheap Russian gas, in exchange furnishing it with the very money it used to fuel the conquest of its neighbours, despite frequent and loud protests from the US. Europe is still sluggishly rising to the occasion, far slower than many would like or is necessary. A part of the reason for Europe’s lethargy is that it was always generally assumed that the United States would eventually ride to the rescue.

But Europe and other allied nations must now wake up to the fact that the US is no longer a reliable partner. We have bled to fight with America when she needed us, and what have we gotten for our troubles? Betrayal. Recently, Trump went straight over the heads of Europeans regarding Ukraine by making concessions to Putin before negotiations had even started, and then offering a platter of confusing and insulting platitudes to European allies. Now, Trump wants to negotiate a deal with Russia for Ukraine, without considering Ukraine an equal partner, and without the input of any European allies. This isn’t just insulting. It’s nothing less than a total betrayal that smacks of desperation and arrogance. The United States cannot be trusted to act in our collective interest. It has been captured by hostile bad faith actors.

This comes on the heel of the United States Senate adding to its litany of shame by confirming Tulsi Gabbard as America’s national intelligence executive; an utterly deranged conspiracy theorist whose apologia of Putin was so fawning that Russian state media termed her their “girlfriend”. Can we seriously afford to be sharing sensitive intelligence and data with the United States now? Between this and Musk’s arson of government institutions, there is a high chance that anything we share will end up in the hands of our enemies. By all means, warn the Americans if we learn of, say, an imminent threat to American lives. But that’s as far as it should go now.

It is now a matter of our collective security that we break from the United States before the rot spreads. Stop sharing sensitive intelligence. Suspend joint operations and joint training exercises. Stop buying their products and start investing in our own manufacturing. Trump wants to tariff Canadian steel? Fine, then let’s buy that steel instead, and use it to rapidly revitalise our own industries. While we’re at it, get rid of Jack Daniels from British pubs and bars, because Crown Royal is far superior.

Build up our own military forces; each nation should be spending a minimum of 3% of their GDP on defence. Britain alone should have a healthy 150-200 total combat vessels & patrol boats in the Royal Navy, a good 350 combat aircraft in the Royal Air Force, and 150,000 troops in the Army’s regular forces. For comparison, Britain currently has a paltry 58 combat vessels & patrol boats, only 151 combat aircraft, and a measly 74,296 personnel in the Army’s regular forces.

We need to build our defences fast, and we must trace our way forward under the assumption we are already at war. We can’t afford to be having ships staggering into service throughout the 2030s, for example. We need them now.

We should be founding the nucleus of a new international coalition to beef up our collective defence by encouraging allies to spend more on their military forces and foster closer cooperation with them. Collectively, Europe and willing Commonwealth nations like Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, as well as like-minded allies such as Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea, should look to equal the military and economic power of the United States, if not exceed it. This new alliance must speak with one voice when it comes to our collective defence and the protection of free trade with its members.

The United States is Britain’s largest export partner, and second-largest import partner. Can we truly afford to latch a significant part of our economy to the whims of a regime more intent on starting trade wars with its closest allies? We must look to divest trade from them. We have, quite literally, dozens of allies right on our doorstep. We should be angling to rejoin the Common Market to reduce trade barriers with the European Union. Canada once considered the United Kingdom its primary export market, but only pivoted to the United States due to post-war damage to Britain’s economy, and Britain’s joining of the European Union. Neither of those barriers are factors any longer, and this option should be seriously revisited, allowing Canada’s lopsided export-import relationship vis-a-vis other nations, and the UK, to divest from the United States and sell to other willing partners.

If there is any country in the world that the United Kingdom should have a ‘special relationship’ with, it is Canada. We are both Commonwealth nations, we share a Head of State, and we have far more in common socially and politically with each other than either nation does with the United States. With Mark Carney, who shepherded the Bank of England through the Covid pandemic, looking increasingly likely to win the Canadian Premiership, we could not ask for a better opportunity to foster closer relations with Canada, and seek to decouple our dependencies on the United States.

Let the United Kingdom and Canada be the foundation of a new international superbloc, one that will stand up for liberal democracy, international law, human rights, and international security. Speaking with a united voice politically, economically, and militarily, we can instead be the voice of liberty and equality in the world, and fill the void that the United States will leave. A new union of nations, committed to the defence and preservation of liberal democracy.

To end this, I will say I have no doubt that America will survive Trump and Musk. They are weak, spineless, anti-American thugs, and gratefully for us all, will be temporary. But it will be very messy. The damage they will unleash will take years, if not decades, to clean up. The damage to America’s international reputation will likely suffer for far longer. More Americans voted against Trump than for him. Now is the time to make your voices heard, to coalesce into an opposition that the international community can deal with, and find hope in. Protest like the Georgians. The world needs your courage, now more than ever, and history will ring with the sonorous echo of your righteous clamour for liberty.

For the rest of the world, even if a Democrat, or someone else, is elected in 2028 who corrects America’s course, we should not simply accept that means relations are suddenly renormalised. It will take a great deal of effort and acts of deep contrition for the United States of the future to earn back the trust and respect of the international community.

I’m not saying anything going forward will be easy. It’s necessary. The special relationship is over. It’s time to accept that and move on with our new friends and family. This time, we have the chance to get it right.