Our total obsession with events in America are embarrassing, says columnist Brian Reade, who has some stern words of advice for our Prime Minister on how to deal with Donald Trump
I switched Sky News on late Tuesday afternoon to find out what was happening.
And this was what I saw. The screen was split between outgoing US Secretary of State Antony Blinken making a bland speech about the Middle East, and little-known US senators interviewing Donald Trump ’s Secretary of Defence pick Pete Hegseth.
After an eternity, Sky cut away from those Washington DC events to a press conference in California where a fire chief was warning all LA residents that the wildfire threat had not passed. Over on the BBC they too were covering Trump’s Pentagon pick.
And I wondered what had happened to all the UK news on a day when the Chancellor was being heavily grilled about the parlous state of the economy?
It was the same last week, when our news channels cut away from the Commons debate on grooming gangs to Kamala Harris ratifying the results of November’s US presidential election. And the week before when bulletins were cleared for blanket coverage
of the death of single-term 1970s’ president Jimmy Carter.
Our total obsession with events in a country that hasn’t been British for 250 years is an embarrassment. Especially when most of our biggest stories barely merit a mention in US media.
It’s a microcosm of that most excruciating of myths, the Special Relationship, whose peddlers would have you believe Americans see us as the most important nation outside of theirs.
When in reality their presidents trot out the “special” line to patronise us in the assured hope we’ll give their imperialist forays moral backing. To ensure we’ll be cheerleaders in blood-drenched ra-ra skirts (even though we can barely afford the pompoms) dancing alongside GI Joes.
This relationship is so not special that Barack Obama was rumoured to have chucked Winston Churchill’s bust out of the Oval Office when he was elected, and Joe Biden sneered at Britain at every opportunity, notably throwing us under the bus with his rushed withdrawal from Afghanistan when we pleaded for him to stay longer.
And now, because Trump has a mother-fixation about the royals and has bizarrely convinced himself that Brexit was a vote of confidence in him, there is a feeling on the UK’s Right that if Keir Starmer rolls out his tongue like a red carpet, the Donald will help Make Britain Great Again. But it’s a cruel illusion.
Even if Trump has the will, or the time, to construct a UK/US free-trade deal he would demand so much bang for his buck, so much subjugation from Westminster, that we would have to reject it. And then be hit with tariffs like everyone else.
With his calls to annex Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal, and rename the Gulf of Mexico, it’s clear that Trump pines for global domination. And he will expect his special relationship lackeys to back his megalomania to the hilt.
So here’s my advice to Keir Starmer. Don’t be a fawning poodle like Tony Blair was to George Bush after he was dazzled by American flattery. Don’t be a groveller like Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch are to the MAGA crowd.
Be more like Harold Wilson was with Lyndon Johnson when he refused to sacrifice a drop of British blood in Vietnam, and instead concentrated on the white heat of a new scientific revolution at home and building closer ties with Europe.
If Trump is hellbent on being the unopposed police chief of the world, then America’s special constable should hand in its badge.
