Is The 'Special Relationship' Between The UK And The US Dead?

King Charles was under immense pressure to boost fractured relations on either side of the pond this week.

Political Correspondent

HuffPost UK's politics podcast

Donald Trump has never been bothered about maintaining tradition.

Despite decades of work on both sides of the Atlantic to build and maintain the so-called “special relationship” between the UK and America, the president’s second term has put it under almost unbearable strain.

Prime minister Keir Starmer initially bent over backwards to woo Trump in a bid to secure a trade deal and keep the maverick Republic on side.

But then Trump began threatening to annex Greenland, undermining Nato, withdrawing support for Ukraine, tearing into British military capabilities and U-turning over the Chagos deal.

The scandal around Starmer’s decision to appoint, then sack, Peter Mandelson – a friend of convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein – as the UK’s ambassador to Washington, did not help either.

But the final straw came when Trump, together with Israel, bombed Iran.

Starmer rejected the US’s requests for UK support, leading to fresh verbal abuse from the president.

Trump said Starmer was “no Winston Churchill” and compared him to Neville Chamberlain who championed the Nazi appeasement policy before World War 2.

He’s even threatened to withdraw the US recognition of the Falkland Islands as a British overseas territory.

It’s unsurprising, then, that the UK’s ambassador to the US Christian Turner suggested the relationship between the two countries was not that special after all.

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