‘Forget the special relationship. America is just not that into us’: a Spectator debate

Churchill popped up early at last week’s Spectator debate, which was sponsored by Brewin Dolphin.

Churchill popped up early at last week’s Spectator debate, which was sponsored by Brewin Dolphin. James Crabtree, the Financial Times’s comment editor, deplored the way our war leader’s bust had been ‘removed from the White House’ by an incoming Barack Obama. It marked the terminal point in a relationship that once shaped world events. America was looking east. Obama had pledged to run ‘a Pacific presidency’. Crabtree repeated Helmut Schmidt’s gag about our alliance with the Americans, ‘a relationship so special that only one side knows it exists’.

Nile Gardiner admitted that Obama was no lover of Britain, but he reminded us that the motion refers to America, not to any particular White House inmate, and Obama’s mid-term drubbing had shown how poorly he reflects ‘the spirit and heart of America’. Our friendship was ‘the world’s strongest alliance’. ‘The Germans and French dream of the access we enjoy in Washington.’ America’s interest in Kate and Wills’s engagement, which received blanket TV coverage over there, will remind the world how much they love us.

Hugh Hunter, former British vice-consul in Florida, said the psychological differences between the countries ran deep. Americans were isolationist and profoundly individualistic. ‘How could there be a special relationship?’ he asked.

Gideon Rachman, chief foreign affairs commentator at the Financial Times, likened the relationship to a romance. ‘It’s cyclical. Sometimes it even enters a manic phase. And because it’s an unequal relationship it’s always being examined for signs of decrepitude.’ The alliance thrives in three key areas: we share intelligence, we collaborate within the Security Council, and our soldiers fight side by side in Afghanistan. Rachman admitted that Britain rarely features in American foreign policy documents, but this is because we’re stable, prosperous and friendly; foreign policy must concern itself with dangers.