Michael Goodwin: The British ambassador was right the special relationship is in tatters

An old but memorable view holds that “an ambassador is an honest gentleman sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.” If true, the British ambassador to the United States has utterly failed to do his duty.Instead, Sir Christian Turner told a very unfortunate truth about Great Britain and its tattered ties with America.His words became public just as King Charles and Queen Camilla arrived in Washington to try to mend relations with President Trump, who has publicly bashed Prime Minister Keir Starmer for refusing to support the US war effort in Iran. According to parts of a recording published by the Financial Times, Turner waded into trouble when he told visiting British students in February that he didn’t like the term “special relationship” to describe the link between the two countries. The phrase, said to have been coined by Winston Churchill after the Allied victory in World War II, was meant to describe the bond between the US and the UK that had endured over the centuries and through two world wars.

Since then, it has also survived the Cold War and two Gulf Wars. But Turner, who had just taken his post in Washington, was recorded as saying he wasn’t fond of the phrase because it was “quite nostalgic” and “backwards-looking,” while also suggesting it no longer applied.He did tell the students, who were 16 and 17 years old, that UK-US ties were “strong” and that, “Particularly on defense and security, we are intertwined.”Yet his government rebuked him when it said in a statement to CBS News that his remarks about the special relationship “are certainly not any reflection of the UK Government’s position.”Perhaps, but there has been little that could be called “special” about the current state of bilateral relations.Starmer has foolishly made common cause with anti-Trump leaders in France, Spain and Germany, almost as if he and they are as willing as Trump to break up the troubled NATO marriage. Nonetheless, it wa...