Love, hate … indifference: is US-UK relationship still special?
Donald Trump’s three-day state visit in early June, confirmed last week, will place unique strains on the so-called “special relationship” between the US and Britain – or so it is claimed. The 45th US president is undoubtedly a divisive figure. Polls suggest three quarters of Britons object to his policies and personal behaviour. Like a boorish house guest, Trump seems to delight in upsetting his hosts.
Yet controversial visits by US presidents are nothing new. Ronald Reagan encountered furious protests in 1982 after a decision – agreed with Margaret Thatcher – to deploy nuclear-armed cruise missiles at British bases. George W Bush faced a similarly hostile reception when he came to stay at Buckingham Palace in 2003, months after invading Iraq.
It was not always this way. When newly elected John F Kennedy flew in with his glamorous young wife, Jackie, in 1961, half a million people lined the route from London airport to catch a glimpse of the Camelot fairytale. In 1977, Jimmy Carter visited George Washington’s ancestral home in the north-east. To ecstatic applause, the peanut farmer from Georgia told the people of Newcastle: “I am a Geordie now.”
These contrasting high and lows accurately reflect the inherent vagaries of a relationship that has rarely run as smoothly as politicians on both sides of the Atlantic often pretend.
It is a relationship born in conflict: the 1775-83 American war of independence. There were more clashes.
