America isn’t Britain’s special friend. It couldn’t care less

Our nations have shared interests, but we have good reason to feel bitter about how we’re often treated

The role of US ambassador to Britain is a curious one. Your official residence is a Regent’s Park mansion, boasting 35 bedrooms and the second largest private garden in London (after Buckingham Palace). Unlike being envoy of, say, Guatemala or Bahrain, UK political leaders will come trotting to your door at the drop of a hat. However, there are downsides. I suspect phone conversations with Joe Biden are not particularly riveting. There is also a more existential problem, namely that your entire job is built on a mirage – convincing the world that the “special relationship” is not just real, but flourishing.

In truth, the special relationship, such that it ever existed, lives primarily in the minds of our political class, and the occasional utterances of American politicians when they want a favour. Like clockwork, US Ambassador Jane Hartley resurrected the trope from its usual rigor mortis yesterday in a column following the joint US-UK strikes on the Houthis in Yemen.

“In light of inflection points we face in the coming year,” she wrote, “I’m certain the world needs the special relationship now more than ever.” In diplomat-speak, there’s a big orange elephant in the room; Donald Trump has been called many things over the years, but an “inflection point”?

The article demonstrates the asymmetry, which is visible even in diplomatic appointments. While we send seasoned officials to Washington, America dispatches donors and chums of whoever is in power. Dame Karen Pierce, current British ambassador to the US, cut her teeth outmanoeuvring the Russians and Chinese on the UN Security Council and brings a wealth of diplomatic experience. Hartley was first appointed to the diplomatic corps by Barack Obama, off the back of her Democrat fundraising efforts.

The fact that an ambassadorship is invariably a plum job for a much-valued fundraiser or friend surely shows just how little actual listening and bilateral engagement with allies matters in the formation of US foreign policy. Who needs a career diplomat in London or Paris when the decision has already been taken in Washington?

In a way, the relationship is special, in the sense that it is demonstrably worse – we expect things but rarely get them, and are surprised when we don’t. Other countries, which take a more realistic view, are rarely disappointed in the same way. There was incredulity in Britain when President Biden was reported to have blocked Ben Wallace’s appointment as Nato secretary-general, and was said to favour EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen instead. While VDL had been a disastrous German defence secretary, Wallace is well-respected in military circles, and was prescient about the European response to Putin – not to mention the candidate of the US’S “strongest ally”. None of this mattered much to America.

Then there was the tragic death of Harry Dunn – run over by a US government employee. Having scuttled out of the country and been given diplomatic immunity, Anne Sacoolas received a super-strict eight-month sentence (suspended) and was disqualified from driving (in a country she doesn’t live in). That’ll learn her, as our friends across the pond would say.

These are more recent manifestations of a historic trend. Our two countries have many shared values and interests, but our recent wars together have given us cause bitterly to regret blindly following the US. From Biden’s abandonment of Kabul to the Troubles, indeed all the way back to Suez, Britain has often been treated most shoddily by the nation our politicians maintain is our closest ally. As Kissinger, our essential window into the realities of foreign policy, said, “To be America’s enemy may be dangerous, but to be its friend is fatal.”

This isn’t just a military fact, either. It is strategic and economic, too. Barack Obama rather said the quiet bit out loud with his infamous “back of the queue” quip in 2016. Regardless of your view on Brexit, this provided a clear insight into Washington’s thinking. We are useful insofar as we are its man in Brussels. Should we deviate from US interests, we can expect nothing, despite all the public genuflection, despite all the blood and treasure spent abroad. However justifiable air strikes on the Houthis may be, the idea that UK support will earn us “points” that we can use to our advantage in Washington is for the birds.

The un-special relationship transcends party politics. In 2009, it was widely reported that Obama had offered the position of US ambassador to Ireland to Peter King, a New York Republican congressman famous for being the most vociferous Ira-supporter in mainstream US politics. Even Trump’s avowed affection for Britain never resulted in that trade deal, while his administration showed a similar desire to meddle in British internal affairs. And lest we forget, the Sacoolas affair occurred under his watch.

Now, an unappetising rerun looms: either an administration that treats Britain with contempt or indifference, or one with a lingering fondness for the UK that still might do something disastrous like selling out Ukraine.

Meanwhile, the US economy steams ahead, not just of Britain but the entirety of Europe. No one should begrudge America its domestic success; if anything we could learn from its dynamism and naked self-interest. Our real beef ought to be with a UK political class that insists on prostrating itself before America and believing the myth, in spite of the evidence.