Since the Suez debacle, the chemistry between American presidents and British prime ministers has helped determine the ‘special relationship’s’ potency. Between Harold Macmillan and John F. Kennedy, as with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, it was dynamic. Between Edward Heath and Richard Nixon, John Major and Bill Clinton, it was inert. Many commentators reasonably assumed London-Washington relations would go the same way in 2000 when Tony Blair’s best buddy, Clinton, vacated the White House and in swaggered George W. Bush.
To the horror of metropolitan opinion, Bush and Blair proceeded to form an alliance more controversial than any that had existed between their 20th-century predecessors. Its full effects will take decades to appraise.
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