The stakes couldn\u2019t be higher and the risks couldn\u2019t be greater when the prime minister visits Washington this week<\/p>\n
For British prime ministers, with their ideas about the world shaped by the histories of Churchill and Roosevelt, Maggie and Ronnie, and the rest of the folklore about the transatlantic alliance, the prospect of a visit to the White House usually causes tingles of excitement. One of our senior diplomats once offered me an explanation of the allure: \u201cThe red carpet is laid out, the national anthems are played, all that stuff is very seductive.\u201d This will be customarily accompanied by ritualistic words about the importance and invincibility of the \u201cspecial relationship\u201d.<\/p>\n
Number 10 lobbied hard<\/a> to get Sir Keir Starmer across the Atlantic early in the second term of Donald Trump and, until recently, Downing Street people were telling themselves that an encounter between the two men needn\u2019t be a disaster and might even turn out to be a success. In the weeks since Trump\u2019s re-election as US president, UK policy might be summarised by the phrase \u201cDon\u2019t poke the beast\u201d. Keep the temperature cool. Ignore provocations. Attempt to trade on British heritage \u2013 golf, the royal family \u2013 with which this US president has an affinity. Put David Lammy out there to suggest that there is lots to respect about the man whom the foreign secretary used to call a \u201cwoman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath<\/a>\u201d. Softly-softly was the doctrine and they thought it was bearing fruit.<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The stakes couldn\u2019t be higher and the risks couldn\u2019t be greater when the prime minister visits Washington this week For British prime ministers, with their ideas about the world shaped by the histories of Churchill and Roosevelt, Maggie and Ronnie, and the rest of the folklore about the transatlantic alliance, the prospect of a visit … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34132\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}