End of the Special Relationship
 

Good, never thought that it was that special anyway.....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2...ip-over-poodle

Re: End of the Special Relationship
 

i think there was a special relationship back in the ww2 era ,and we probably would now be run from Europe:rolleyes: without their help .but in recent times i think we were there just to add legitimacy to their wars ,i think there will always be a pact of mutual protection between us ,but going to war on their say so is no longer an option imo.

Re: End of the Special Relationship
 

The 'special' relationship has increasingly become a one way street heading west. Like any relationship in which one side is taken for granted, a period of separation might just help redress the balance and if it doesn't, well the two sides are better off apart forging new partnerships but hopefully remaining friends. Of course if these new partnerships fail to meet expectations there may be a reconciliation of the original parties and, hopefully, the creation of a new, fairer relationship. I won't be holding my breath however as the yanks tend to like things their way or no way....

Re: End of the Special Relationship
 

Anyone remember that scene in Love Actually where Hugh Grant, as the Prime Minister tells the US president to shove it where the sun doesn't shine? That alone would almost secure my vote for the party promising to repeat it.

Re: End of the Special Relationship
 

Amongst many normal american people there is an affection for the UK and i personally experienced it many times when i was in the US but politically that isn't the case. Despite all the people who hail obama as some sort of saviour the man is an individualistic oppurtunist and has no real allegiance to anyone or anything and i don't and never have felt he was the warm caring person many would like us to believe.

Bush i think had more affection for the UK and made maximum use of it partly aided by a PM who also had an agenda beyond that of the interests of the UK. But i do think the time has come for the UK to back away from the US for a bit and only partner where there is a clear benefit for us in doing so unlike the recent past where the benefit has been all oneway.

Re: End of the Special Relationship
 

It's not as if there was any pressure or bullying as with the attitude of France and Germany. They keep saying that if you don't go along with what they want, you are not truly part of the EU. A example is the recent talks about Greece. France and Germany talk together to agree a plan and only then the other countries in the Euro-zone get told about it. The other countries are not allowed to take part in the original discussions.

Re: End of the Special Relationship
 

The USA is losing it's number one world power spot to China so maybe we should cosy up to them?

Re: End of the Special Relationship
 

They don't really need/want partners but would probably quite like to see our existing alliances break down.

Re: End of the Special Relationship
 

Pact of mutual protection, sounds like NATO to me

---------- Post added at 13:50 ---------- Previous post was at 13:44 ----------

Personally I'd like to see us get closer with the Commonwealth nations rather than the US or Europe, the only group of nations we can truly rely on in any circumstances, although our influence among nations has been severly diluted thanks to our blindly following a certain US president over recent years.

Re: End of the Special Relationship
 

IIRC Harold MacMillan was looking in to the UK beoming the 51st US state

Re: End of the Special Relationship
 

Wouldn't ever have worked, the US states are far too focussed on silly things like democracy, the will of their electorate and respecting individual privacy, liberty (in most things) and freedom for us to have blended in with our pervasive state interference and disrespect for individual freedom.

The special relationship has brought us little of value for a while so c'est la vie. We've no reason in the modern world to expect any special treatment from Barack Obama and have been sucking up to the US for quite long enough.

Re: End of the Special Relationship
 

The bi-lateral talks between France and Germany over Greece was probably because the pair of them would be putting in by far the lions share of cash in any rescue package for Greece, as regards the UK being involved in this intial discussion what was the point, we are not in the euro.

Regarding the so called special relationship, how special is it when for the last 25 years when British PM's have met the President each time our back-room boys have always insisted that the President mention the special relationship, "courtesy of Chris Meyer ex British ambassador to the US".
According to Meyer its the British politicians who are obsessed with this phrase, and that the Americans just parrot it to keep us happy.
I think the only big time occasion that the UK has said a firm no to the US was in the 60's when President Johnson on numerous occasions tried to get Harold Wilson to commit British troops into the Vietnam meat-grinder, and to he's lasting credit he flatly refused...not a bad legacy.
I wonder what the response would have been had Blair or Thatcher been in power?

Re: End of the Special Relationship
 

Blair would have said yes where would you like me to put our troops and thacther would have told him to take a long walk off a short cliff. Not a hard one to answer there and in thatchers time it could be argued we had the better end of whatever special relationship there was although after that we certainly had the brown end of the stick.

Re: End of the Special Relationship
 

any evidence for that argument?

Re: End of the Special Relationship
 

Im don't think there has ever been a "special" relationship. We have always been close allies and that is all.

If ever in the future it all kicked off, over whatever reason.

I know that I'd rather have Uncle Sam on my team, than our French, and German cousins

Re: End of the Special Relationship
 

Well have you ever known the US be prepared to lend one of their fleet carriers before as they were prepared to do during the falklands conflict to the UK??. I think there was a far warmer relationship between reagan and thatcher then there had been since maybe churchill and roosevelt during the second world war. Either way doesn't change the fact that for the last decade we have been little more then a poodle for the US adding legitimacy to their questionable actions.

Re: End of the Special Relationship
 

and yet Sir John Nott said

As John Nott, the defence secretary at the time, wrote, the Americans "were very, very far from being on our side".

Indeed the relationship was so warm he lied to her about invading a Commonwealth country. Seems to me we only have a relationship on the proviso that we toe their line.

Re: End of the Special Relationship
 

OOooh don't say that it may ruin the Thatcher fantasy for some.

---------- Post added at 02:09 ---------- Previous post was at 02:05 ----------

Thatcher was just as much an Atlantacist as Blair was, if the call had come from the US to help them fight communism she would have been as eager as Blair would have been...strangely she did have some flaws Rizzy!!

Re: End of the Special Relationship
 

I have never said she didn't Froggie but she did put this country first and in her mind at least did what she believed to be best for this country. Didn't always get it right but at least she tried unlike half the lilly livered gits we have these days who would sell us all down the river for a new trough to get their snout in. As for john nott i wouldn't trust him if he told me the sky was blue and the grass was green.

But this is something that can go on forever and a day because there are those who can see what she did without bias seeing both good and bad and those who see only the negative they hold her fully responsible for never remembering seemingly why she had to do some of the stuff she did mainly the previous government and their fantastic handling of the country and it's finances.

Re: End of the Special Relationship
 

and yet the worse excesses of her reign can at the end of her tenure so trying to blame the previous government is like Labour trying to blame the tories for the mess now, it was and is complete tosh.

Re: End of the Special Relationship
 

Yes poll tax was a complete total and utter mess and i ended up in court over it as i was one of the many who opposed it. But most of the things she is most hated for seem to be down quite a bit to action that needed to be taken because of the previous government. Who had allowed the unions to gain great power and dictate policy to the point where they could bring the country to a halt on a whim. Economic mess which by todays standards wasn't too bad but back then needed severe action. No one is saying she was perfect she wasn't not by a long way but she wasn't as bad as some constantly paint her and given what we have had for the past thirteen years she looks even better and that is where some have the problem.

Re: End of the Special Relationship
 

True whereas New Labour started rotten and only got worse.. ;)

Re: End of the Special Relationship
 

I think the hatred of her grows everytime some one opens a utility bill, buys a rail card or tries to find some where affordable to rent....

Re: End of the Special Relationship
 

Yes, because the BT service was so wonderful, and we haven't seen 13 years of Labour Government repeal the Right-To-Buy legislation (in fact, weren't they behind the ALMOs?).............

Anyhoo, not really relevant to the "special relationship"

Re: End of the Special Relationship
 

Your right we haven't seen 13 years of a Labour government, we have seen 13 years of a Tory lite government that has achieved nothing despite having an unprecedented mandate to undo the worst of Thatcherism.

Re: End of the Special Relationship
 

Just as a side note Rizzy it wasn't only sunny Jim's government who caved in to over powerful unions, prior to this Ted had done exactly the same, as had governments of every colour going back to the war.
Politicians of this age had seen the utter misery and degradation of mass unemployment in the 1930's, and consequently were almost single minded in their efforts not to let this happen again.
It was only when Thatcher came along in a period of strife she was able and willing to take on the unions, most reasonable people would agree I think that unions in the 60's and 70's were very militant and that changes needed to happen.
Where I split with this though is the way Thatcher went about it, she had an almost messianic glee about what she was doing irrespective of the massive social costs her policies incurred, don't forget it was her who said that "unemployment was a price worth paying".
Personally I believe that had we not had the Falklands war she would have been voted out in the 83 election, albeit had there been a credible Labour party at the time.
Either way hopefully both Tory and Labour have moved on and nowadays neither want to emulate their predecessors of yesteryear....as much as some on both sides would like to.

Re: End of the Special Relationship
 

:clap::clap::clap::clap:

Re: End of the Special Relationship
 

Some quite interesting thoughts here

Re: End of the Special Relationship
 

Good to hear what Obama really thinks of us, it just confirmed what I thought, that he doesn't like us that much

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...ravate-me.html

Re: End of the Special Relationship
 

Seems to be more Cameron he doesn't like. Never knew he was such a good judge of character.

Re: End of the Special Relationship
 

Well he is right. NATO and Europe are coasting off American defence spending a lot. He should have insisted that we keep to the 2% limit.

Re: End of the Special Relationship
 

Well the UK is spending a hell of a lot more than most other EU/Nato countries so quite what we're to blame for when it comes to contributions is beyond me.

Re: End of the Special Relationship
 

Well Osbourne did say last year that he would commit to the 2% spending until 2020

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33448383

Re: End of the Special Relationship
 

I am not sure the context in which he said it but it's still true that America can be annoyed at their NATO allies. Maybe they have higher expectations of us for historic reasons and the failure of the other NATO states to pull their weight doesn't excuse us from doing the same.

Re: End of the Special Relationship
 

Obama is one of the worst US presidents the has ever been, and I don't fancy either of the next two choices.

Re: End of the Special Relationship
 

On what basis? He was been relatively ok. The handling of the middle-east hasn't been great but it hasn't been worse than his predecessor. The decisions he took early on with the economy turned out to be correct, he managed to get some degree of healthcare improvement passed and his non-middle-eastern foreign policy has been relatively successful.

I would say at worst he is a middle of the road president. I mean he won two-terms and a lot of the 'worst' ones will have been one-term ones or Nixon.

Re: End of the Special Relationship
 

Maybe he should just lecture Germany, France, Spain, Italy etc. etc. first then.

Re: End of the Special Relationship
 

The special relationship is being strained by the Brexit now, I liked the rebuttal

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/...larry-summrers

Re: End of the Special Relationship
 

Posting this in a thread that declared the special relationship dead six years ago could be seen as demonstrating the opposite ;)

The essence of the special relationship isn't economic. It's security. There is a deep level of integration between our military and intelligence services at an operational level. Individual events and political changes don't fundamentally change this.