Black and white analysis of the “special relationship” misses the point: it’s just turned grey
On Saturday, The Sun proclaimed that the “special relationship” between Britain and America was dead. This morning, our sofa-loving former man in Washington, Sir Christopher Meyer, took the opposing view in The Mail on Sunday and suggested that it is “as strong as ever”. The truth, we’d argue, is far more complex and probably lies somewhere in the middle.
Yes, Britain has indeed somewhat blotted her copybook with the USA by snubbing Washington “in her hour of need” but, as Roger Cohen argues in The New York Times, “the two countries will continue to matter a great deal to one another”.
What Meyer, however, neglects in his “it’s as simple as that” analysis of the “special relationship” is that Britain, on the eve of a vote on its EU membership, is, as Cohen suggests, a nation “in search of its role in the world”. Britain is now an island “picking cherries nowhere in particular” and just as was the case when John Major failed to be decisive with his wishy washy stance on Europe, everything’s just become rather grey.
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Time we realised that our interests are internal and not external.
Stop the majority of overseas aid: deport asylum seekers immediately unless they really are in dire danger. Like NZ kick out and don’t allow back any immigrant who commits a crime of gravity during his/her lifetime. And don’t allow America, which itself tends to act as a rogue state, to drag us into ill thought through enterprises.
And never forget the US is a country where only 10% of the population hold passports so the world beyond their shores is a mystery to them. Whereas as British, having built the greatest empire the world has ever seen do know more of the ways of the world and when to hold back.
Palmerston said(I think) “We have no permanent friends;no permanent enemies only permanent interests”
Well said Wayde. Britain doesn’t need the Yanks anymore. Ditch them.
Christopher Meyer ………… Is that not the man that wrote a book about his own ‘special relationship’? He’s a wanker who tosses off morals just like his beady eyed bitch of a wife.
Christopher Meyer: The Paul Burrell of journalism.