Special Relationship can no longer be taken for granted

"Donald Trump may be loud and proud in his love of Britain, but that is far from the full story."

In America’s 250-year story, real closeness with Britain is a relatively new chapter, barely 80 years old. Born in wartime, it grew into a nuclear partnership, an intelligence brotherhood, and a habit of seeing the world through the same strategic lens. But that hard-won closeness is now drifting, and the signs are becoming hard to ignore. Start with the economics. Despite valiant lobbying to avoid it, Britain was swept up in the return of Trump-era tariffs, and UK exports to the US have fallen sharply. Then came the extraordinary intervention over the UK’s modular-reactor contract: Washington’s ambassador publicly scolding London for choosing Rolls-Royce over a U.S. bidder, a level of pressure that would once have been unthinkable.

Add to that the row over the BBC’s recent misstep, and the quiet curbs on intelligence sharing triggered by America’s “narco-terrorism” posture toward Venezuela, and a clear pattern emerges: Washington is treating Britain less like an indispensable ally, and more like another partner to be leaned on. This drift is dangerous because the Special Relationship was never sentimental. It was built out of necessity, to stand firm in the face of tyranny, to support fragile states before they fracture, and to uphold the global order that Churchill and Roosevelt sketched in the Atlantic Charter. That order is now unravelling.

Revisionist powers are watching the West lose cohesion. Britain’s, indeed Europe’s, most immediate threat is Vladimir Putin. Yet the US is increasingly unwilling to confront him.

Trump’s isolationist, transactional doctrine has rewritten the playbook on how America engages with both friends and adversaries, discarding decades-long commitments to uphold international law. Being a true ally of the United States sometimes requires being a critical friend. And this is one of those moments.

Meanwhile, Trump appears to be gearing up for a significant intervention in Venezuela, invoking terrorism law to justify it. Britain has refused to share intelligence for such an operation, a rare and telling rift at the very heart of the alliance.

And Trump’s attacks on the BBC fit into a broader strategy of delegitimising critical media – a tactic that further strains the shared democratic values the relationship once relied upon.

Simply put, Britain and America are drifting away from the common ground that created the Special Relationship, and the global order, in the first place. And that drift comes at the worst possible moment.

With Russia testing Europe’s resolve, China probing the Indo-Pacific balance, Iran stoking regional fires, and proxy conflicts bleeding into global ones, the risk of a wider clash is climbing.

In such a world, London and Washington cannot afford to be out of sync. If the two powers that once anchored the free world can’t even agree on strategy, values, or basic trust, then the forces seeking to rewrite the international order will fill the vacuum.

The Special Relationship didn’t just make Britain and America stronger – it made the world safer. Letting it fracture now would invite dangers neither country is prepared to face alone.

END

First published in the Daily Express on 20th November 2025.