As our country devours itself in a tempest of bickering, bullying and blue passports, we often take cold comfort in the knowledge that across the Atlantic the USA is experiencing something unimaginably harsher. It’s difficult to pinpoint a time in recent memory when our two nations were as united as they are now, making it all the more depressing that we are united only in frustration, suffering, shame. However, former PM Tony Blair recently declared that we should move past the US President’s peerless ability to mess up even simple issues as Brexit Britain will need to rely on its Atlantic ally to maintain its world position. Despairing though this prediction is, and regardless of your opinion of Blair, his falling-back on our connection to the States surely provokes a spot of thought – what’s the big deal about this so-called ‘special relationship’? What does it even mean?
In short, very little. It’s a well-known piece of history that the USA was a subject of the British Empire until it declared independence in 1776. As you might expect, however, America and Britain did reconcile, handily in time for the wars, World and Cold alike, of the twentieth century. Despite all predictions otherwise, the world did not end in nuclear war (though to some that’s looking more possible by the day) and today Britain and America enjoy a relatively healthy partnership, considering one nation used to be the unwilling servant of the other. Yet Blair’s piece highlights the prime reason why this is, and – spoiler alert – it’s neither love nor respect. For the past couple of decades, we’ve served the US as their ‘man’ in Europe, their key ally in discussions with the European Union, even when we’ve been far from their favourite representative – it’s no secret Barack Obama preferred meetings with Merkel over the company of Cameron. Now we’re leaving the EU, what do we have to offer the US that Germany or France don’t? Certainly not our command of our common language English – we discovered recently that France’s President Macron is a better speaker in Theresa May’s language than she is. No, all we can offer is rhetoric about the ‘special relationship’, the political equivalent of ‘you love us really’.
In spite of all this cynicism, I actually do think that the bond between the States and our Isles is something…distinctive, unique. I cannot conceive of ever labelling any of my social relationships as ‘special’, and no pundit (however much of a Europhile they may be) would declare Britain and the EU27 as having a ‘special relationship’ to look forward to. The bond does not solely hearken back to colonial days, either – Australia, Canada, India and the other territories the Empire occupied all possess dull ‘normal relationships’ with the former heart of Empire. The ‘special’ nature of our connection stems, I suggest, from the radical shift in power I’ve hinted at above. Britain once ruled over large areas of the American continent, and that rule made itself known in extortionate taxes, a legal system weighted against the colonial subjects, and blocked trade, among many other violations of trust. One could argue reclaiming this dominance, a power at once spectacular and monstrous, is the aim of Brexit, for it certainly is not the case in the twenty-first century, where America leads the West and arguably the world. The Eagle leads the Bulldog by the nose for sure, in such a manner as we could call ‘poetic justice’ – the severe master now waiting on the freed servant. ‘Special’, here, means ‘reversed’, a euphemism for those who continue to behold the days where The Sun Never Set with a tender eye to silence their misplaced shame. No wonder I’ve never used it in everyday life.
You are, of course, welcome to disagree. Just because the concept of a ‘special relationship’ is almost exclusively employed in a political context in Britain doesn’t mean that’s the only place where it exists – we can look to scientific collaborations, the arts, or simple social interactions for evidence of our enhanced connection. Who knows, perhaps in our shared headaches of Brexit and Trump we’ll discover something strange and new in our bond. Perhaps we’ll finally pin down that spark and find out what makes our relationship so ‘special’.