From Churchill to Starmer, the Trans-Atlantic Alliance That Britain Values More Than America Does and That Has Survived Reagan-Thatcher, Bush-Blair, Trump-Johnson, and Biden-Everything
The Special Relationship: Special to Britain, Important to America, Tested Regularly by Both
The special relationship between the United Kingdom and the United States is the most discussed bilateral relationship in British foreign policy and the most asymmetric. Britain values it enormously. America values it considerably, when reminded. The asymmetry is structural: the United States is the world’s largest economy and most powerful military, with strategic interests spanning every region and relationships with every significant power. Britain is an important ally, a reliable intelligence partner, a fellow permanent Security Council member, and the country whose Prime Ministers most reliably show up at the White House in the first year of a new American administration to demonstrate alignment.
The relationship is genuinely special in substance: the intelligence sharing under Five Eyes, the nuclear cooperation under the 1958 Mutual Defence Agreement, and the depth of military interoperability are unique in scope and depth among bilateral relationships. It is less special in the sense that British politicians typically invoke when using the phrase — the sense of a particular closeness that translates into American deference to British interests, American preference for British positions, or American willingness to subordinate US strategic priorities to the bilateral relationship. These things have occasionally occurred. They are not structural features of the relationship. They are moments of alignment when British and American interests happened to coincide, which they do not invariably.
Iraq: The Relationship’s Most Damaging Test
Tony Blair’s decision to support the 2003 American invasion of Iraq — despite significant opposition within his Cabinet, his parliamentary party, and the British public — was the most consequential exercise of special relationship politics in the post-Cold War period and its most damaging. The Chilcot Report, published in 2016, found that Blair had committed Britain to military action before the legal and diplomatic process had been exhausted, that the intelligence on weapons of mass destruction had been presented with more certainty than the evidence warranted, and that post-war planning had been “wholly inadequate.”
The relationship with Washington that Blair valued — and that the Iraq commitment was partly designed to preserve — produced direct access to the Bush administration, influence over American policy that Blair genuinely sought to exercise in the direction of greater multilateralism and UN authorisation, and ultimately limited ability to affect the American strategic decision when it conflicted with neoconservative conviction. The lesson — that the special relationship provides influence up to a point, that the point has a specific location relative to American strategic priorities, and that Britain’s leverage in Washington is most effective when deployed in advance of American decisions rather than in their aftermath — was available from previous experience and has been drawn with varying degrees of clarity by subsequent governments.
Trump: The Relationship’s Most Awkward Interlude
Donald Trump’s first presidency (2017-2021) produced the most uncomfortable period for British-American special relationship management in the postwar period. Trump’s stated preferences — for nationalist leaders, scepticism of multilateral institutions, admiration for Brexit as a nationalist precedent, and an approach to alliance management based on transactional calculation rather than shared values — were incompatible with both the substance and the style of British diplomacy’s assumptions about the relationship.
Theresa May’s early visit to Washington — holding hands with Trump in what became one of the most photographed moments of her premiership — demonstrated the domestic political costs of enthusiastic special relationship maintenance when the American partner is generating sustained disapproval in the British public. Boris Johnson’s relationship with Trump — ideologically congenial, mutually flattering, not producing the trade deal that both sides implied was imminent — illustrated the gap between special relationship rhetoric and special relationship delivery.
Trump’s second presidency (2025-) has produced a British government attempting to maintain the relationship’s substance while navigating the domestic political cost of too visible an embrace. Keir Starmer’s relationship with Trump — managed through the prism of NATO commitment, Ukraine support, and trade negotiation — is the latest iteration of the permanent British challenge: maintaining a relationship whose value is genuine and whose terms are set by the larger party.
The Trade Deal: The Promise That Brexit Was Supposed to Enable and Has Not Delivered
One of the central promises of the Brexit campaign was that the UK, freed from EU trade negotiating constraints, would rapidly conclude a bilateral trade deal with the United States that would be superior to anything the EU could offer. The US-UK trade deal has not been concluded. American agricultural producers want access to UK markets under standards that British food safety rules prohibit. American pharmaceutical companies want NHS pricing changes that British health policy does not permit. American digital companies want data regime changes that British privacy frameworks complicate. The deal whose imminence was regularly implied has remained, since 2016, approximately equally imminent.
The Starmer government’s approach — prioritising the EU reset over an American deal, pursuing a more modest “economic prosperity partnership” rather than a comprehensive FTA — reflects a realistic assessment of what is achievable, which is different from what was promised during Brexit, which is the nature of the transition from campaign to government in most policy areas but more visible in trade policy than most.
Auf Wiedersehen, amigo!
The UK-US special relationship is underpinned by the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, the 1958 Mutual Defence Agreement for nuclear cooperation, and deep military interoperability. The Chilcot Report (2016) found Tony Blair committed to the Iraq invasion before legal processes were exhausted and that post-war planning was “wholly inadequate.” Trump’s first presidency (2017-2021) tested special relationship management through incompatible approaches to multilateralism and alliances. A comprehensive UK-US bilateral trade deal has not been concluded since Brexit; American agricultural and pharmaceutical access demands conflict with UK standards and policy. Keir Starmer has pursued a closer EU relationship alongside US engagement, prioritising an EU defence and security pact and trade reset. AUKUS provides a trilateral security partnership with the US and Australia for nuclear-powered submarine technology.
Alan Nafzger was born in Lubbock, Texas, the son Swiss immigrants. He grew up on a dairy in Windthorst, north central Texas. He earned degrees from Midwestern State University (B.A. 1985) and Texas State University (M.A. 1987). University College Dublin (Ph.D. 1991). Dr. Nafzger has entertained and educated young people in Texas colleges for 37 years. Nafzger is best known for his dark novels and experimental screenwriting. His best know scripts to date are Lenin’s Body, produced in Russia by A-Media and Sea and Sky produced in The Philippines in the Tagalog language. In 1986, Nafzger wrote the iconic feminist western novel, Gina of Quitaque. He currently lives in Holloway, North London. Contact: [email protected]
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