Cracks grow in the “special relationship”

TT 

Published 20.22

           

           British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and US President Donald Trump in a not entirely friendly                     greeting in Egypt last year. Photo: Evan Vucci/AP/TT

The so-called special relationship between the US and Britain has survived many crises. But the crack has rarely been deeper than now.

– This is not Winston Churchill we are dealing with.

The words are Donald Trump’s, are about Keir Starmer and came during a press conference at the White House on Tuesday.

The US president’s great dissatisfaction with the British Prime Minister comes after Starmer’s initial refusal to let the US use British air bases during the attacks on Iran.

– It’s taken us three, four days to figure out where we can land, Trump complained before comparing today’s British leader to Churchill.

Very sad

Trump had said in an interview with The Sun, published on Tuesday, that the countries’ once strong relationship “was the most solid of them all, but now we have very strong relationships with other countries in Europe”.

– I mean, France has been fantastic, everyone has been fantastic. Britain has been completely different.

– It’s very sad that the relationship is clearly not what it used to be.

The dissatisfaction mainly concerns the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean, which Britain is in the process of handing over to Mauritius.

The archipelago is home to the Diego Garcia air base, which the British lease for at least 99 years – and Starmer did not want the US to use that base in attacks on Iran. Only on Sunday did Britain agree to let the US use British military bases – to carry out “defensive” attacks on Iranian missiles and their launch pads.

Like Hugh Grant

Starmer has rarely publicly said anything negative about Trump, nor has he responded to the Churchill comment. His words in parliament on Monday about not participating in the attacks were unusually harsh for the diplomatic lawyer Starmer.

– President Trump has expressed his dissatisfaction with our decision not to participate, but it is my duty to decide what is in the best interests of the United Kingdom.

This prompted the Financial Times to call the words “Starmer’s ‘Love Actually’ moment”, a reference to the 2003 comedy in which Hugh Grant’s Prime Minister stands up to Billy Bob Thornton’s President.

However, Stephen Doughty, a minister of state at the Foreign Office, denies that there are cracks in “the special relationship”, a relationship that was not least pushed by Winston Churchill and which was of importance when Prime Minister Tony Blair sided with President George W Bush before the Iraq War in 2003.

– Our relationship with the United States is strong. It has stood the test of time and it continues to stand, and will stand the test of time in the future, he said, according to AP, in parliament on Tuesday.