If the UK wants to regain serious respect in the world, it needs its European leg as well as its transatlantic one<\/p>\n
\u201cA friend who bullies us is no longer a friend. And since bullies only respond to strength, from now onward, I will be prepared to be much stronger. And the president should be prepared for that.\u201d Thus spoke Hugh Grant, playing the British prime minister confronting the US president in a famous scene in the romcom Love Actually. Real-life British prime minister Keir Starmer has attempted to stand up ever so slightly to the current bully in the White House over the latest US war in the Middle East. Despite the British government\u2019s right-royal efforts to flatter Donald Trump ever since he was elected US president, his response to Starmer\u2019s little attempt has been a torrent of contempt. So the reality is not Love Actually. It\u2019s Contempt Actually.<\/p>\n
Asked about the British government\u2019s subtle distinction between defensive strikes in the Gulf, which it now supports, and offensive ones, which it doesn\u2019t, Maga ideologue Steve Bannon tells the New Statesman\u2019s Freddie Hayward: \u201cThat\u2019s diplomatic bullshit. Fuck you. You\u2019re either an ally or you\u2019re not. Fuck you. The special relationship is over.\u201d Ah, the \u201cspecial relationship\u201d! It must be 40 years since I first heard former West German chancellor Helmut Schmidt say: \u201cThe special relationship is so special only one side knows it exists.\u201d<\/p>\n
Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If the UK wants to regain serious respect in the world, it needs its European leg as well as its transatlantic one \u201cA friend who bullies us is no longer a friend. And since bullies only respond to strength, from now onward, I will be prepared to be much stronger. And the president should be … 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-69608","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\/69608","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=69608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69608\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}