US and Britain need a ‘special relationship’ – Bernard Ingham

The truth is that we haven’t a clue
what the next four years will be like other than possibly tougher than in living peacetime memory. Will there be a special relationship? There’d better
be. And does it still matter? You bet it does.

Having nailed my colours to the mast, I had better explain myself.

In almost every case I can think of the temperature of the so-called special relationship has depended on two people: the President of the United States and our Prime Minister. It all comes down to personality.

In so far as anyone can ever be sure what Donald Trump is thinking from hour to hour – apart from himself –he seems to have a soft spot for Boris Johnson. Whether that would survive any failure to Brexit on December 31 is another matter, given that Nigel Farage and Trump are close-bosomed pals.

But let us not get carried away. While personal relationships count, what matters in the end are America’s interests. We can’t expect the USA to satisfy our every whim.

After all, it took Franklin D Roosevelt several years to join the conflict against Hitler and his barbaric Nazi creed – and then only after Japan had bombed Pearl Harbour.

Then take Ronald Reagan and 
George Bush Senior with whom I was closely acquainted. It took a lot of Margaret Thatcher’s ear-bashing down the telephone to get Reagan to come off the fence over the invasion of the Falklands.

But once he did – against division in his own ranks – his military intelligence service was so good, according to those who should know, that it was crucial to victory as was the American’s declaration of war against the Third Reich.

I doubt whether there could be a generally closer identify of view and personal regard than between Reagan and Thatcher. Yet the relationship was far from all sweetness and light, even if Rhett Butler always kissed Scarlett O’Hara on the helicopter pad on her visits to Camp David.

She went off the deep end when Reagan invaded Grenada – “the Queen’s territory” – to get rid of a nasty Left machine without so much as by your leave.

She thoroughly investigated the international legitimacy of Reagan bombing Tripoli to teach the terrorist, Colonel Gaddafi, a lesson before she agreed to use of our air bases after France and Spain had turned down overflying rights.

We twice flew to Washington to 
“wash his head”, as the FCO inelegantly put it, over his reliance on Star Wars and then, to Mrs Thatcher’s disbelief, offering to get rid of nuclear weapons at his summit with Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik.

And all the while his loose approach to spending, even if it was mostly on the defence of the West, worried her.

The point of all this is to show just how much personality counts.

Reagan was a big man, if not a debater, who knew which side his bread was buttered in this world. Can you imagine the vain Trump putting up with a Thatcher handbagging?

This brings me to George Bush Senior, one of the most decent leaders I have 
met.

For all his foreign affairs and security background, he saw the route to European influence through Germany. It is a White House tendency until they discover who is their only reliable friend in Europe.

Will then the tendency to think Germany first take over once we quit
the EU? Probably is the only realistic answer.

But Germany, heading for a general election and the demise of Angela 
Merkel, is in a mess like the rest of Europe.

What is more, unlike us, it does not pay its whack towards its defence through Nato – as Trump has sensibly reminded the European mainland as a whole.

We have consistently been a more reliable, if sometimes critical, ally. What is more our value to the USA is likely to increase with our world view as an independent, sovereign nation.

Finally, to turn to my third question: does the special relationship matter?

I would argue that it matters more now than for decades with the West, including the USA, in turmoil and China and Russia trying to conquer the world for totalitarian communism.

It behoves the next US president and Boris Johnson to co-operate closely in the interest of freedom.

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