Has Trump and Starmer’s 'special relationship' turned toxic?

0:02Sky News, the full story first.

0:08Coming up, Donald Trump is threatening tariffs on Britain for saying he probably shouldn't invade Greenland. So has this special relationship become a toxic one?

0:21Donald Trump is threatening tariffs on the UK and other allies who have opposed his plans to annex Greenland, effectively saying fall into line or pay up. Number 10 announced an emergency address from Sir Keir Starmer in response, but anyone hoping for a Hugh Grant in Love Actually moment from the Prime Minister would have been a wee bit disappointed. The use of tariffs against allies is completely wrong. It is not the right way to resolve differences within an alliance. Not quite the nuclear response some had been hoping for. That said, is now the time to reassess our alliance with the United States?

1:01Is this just Trump being Trump or a reminder that when push comes to shove, Britain's just another country in the queue? Was the special relationship ever quite as significant as we keep telling ourselves? Or has it always been simply dependent on who's sitting in the Oval Office? Lord Ricketts is a career diplomat who's served in a number of roles in a number of administrations, including National Security Advisor, Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Office and Ambassador to the United States. It does often feel like we only get you on the Sky News Daily when things are going wrong. And right now it certainly feels as if the relationship between the UK and the United States, well, it's not great.

1:41It certainly doesn't feel very special. It doesn't, no. It's a long-standing, deep-seated relationship. It had its turbulences in the past. But we've never had a president like this who doesn't really pay any attention to international law and doesn't really rate allies. And that's a pretty significant change from the world that I did diplomacy in for 40 years. How bad is it for a president of the United States, in essence, to try and bully, to try and blackmail the United Kingdom and other European nations into stepping back from Greenland? It's completely unprecedented. If we just remember NATO is an alliance where we're supposed to be one for all and all for one.

2:22If one is attacked, then other members would come to the defence of that member. If we have the major ally in NATO threatening to take by force the territory of another NATO member, I mean, that really hits at the roots of the NATO alliance, which has been based on trust since it was done in 49. So this is a completely new world at this point. And British prime ministers and other European leaders are really having to make it up as they go along in trying to deal with someone who is not being rational about trying to seek American interests. If Donald Trump does proceed with the tariffs, if he does proceed with the annexation of Greenland, does that not mean the end to not just the special relationship, but an end to NATO?

3:02Well, it's hard to see how NATO could survive as an effective alliance if the confidence and trust between allies has broken down to that extent. I mean, I'm sure NATO, which is a big organization, it has 10 ,000 civilian and military staff. It has commands all over Europe. It wouldn't disappear overnight. But the sort of lifeblood of national security would no longer be running through the veins of NATO. and countries like the UK would have to look to other structures to deal with our most vital national security interests. And that, of course, would be a profound upheaval. What will be going on right now between the two countries?

3:37Listening to the Prime Minister earlier, he really leaned heavily into the conversations that he says will be taking place at every level, from Prime Minister, President down. We saw a Prime Minister who was being entirely rational about the relationship. The problem is he's dealing with a President who is completely irrational, as far as I can see, about pursuing American interests. So that's difficult. But I am sure every hour, every day, there will be the National Security Advisor, senior staff from the Foreign Office, the embassy in Washington, other ministers, all connecting with their counterparts, trying to get across the message that there are other ways to achieve what Donald Trump wants.

4:15We can all work together on the security of the Arctic, of Greenland. We can work together on exploiting the mineral resources of Greenland. All of that is possible within a cooperative relationship with Denmark and other European countries. So I think probably they're not only trying to reach out to the White House, but to other centres of opinion, Congress, other departments of the American government, commentators, to try and get that message across through whatever channel will work to get it to Donald Trump, to get him to think again. How often, though, have we seen Donald Trump think again?

4:48It is a real worry that what we call the checks and balances in the American system, other centers of power that can counterbalance the power of the president, the Supreme Court, the Congress, don't seem to be operating in that way. He does seem to be able to operate more or less with impunity. Nobody seems to be stopping him. But in a few cases in the last year or so, Kier Starmer, Emmanuel Macron have been quite effective at pulling Trump back when he's boxed himself into a corner. If you remember that awful Oval Office car crash with Zelensky in the first weeks of the administration, several European leaders, including Kier Starmer, dashed over to Washington.

5:22They had talks with Trump and they persuaded him to take a rather more reasonable line towards Ukraine. So face-to-face contact with Donald Trump is important, I think. He does seem to rate Keir Starmer, which is good. He does seem to listen to him. He's going to be at the Davos gathering of the economic great and good in the world in Switzerland this week. Keir Starmer, I'm sure, will be going as well, as will other European leaders. And there they can sit down with Donald Trump, away from the microphones, hopefully, and talk to him about how he can best achieve American interests without breaking up this alliance that has held us together in common security for nearly 80 years now.

5:59Is that necessity to get Donald Trump in a room and sit down with him face to face to thrash this out? Is that directly linked to the fact that sometimes he appears to have a very short memory? I mean, Keir Starmer, one of his previous trips to the White House, basically prostrated himself in front of the president, handed over a letter from the king inviting him here on that bells and whistles state visit. I just look back at that now, both the incident, the exchange in the White House and the visit itself, and I wonder whether it was worth it. Well, that's a very fair question. Yes, he has a short memory.

6:29There is no nostalgia, sentimentality for a special relationship with the UK. It's always transactional. But he does seem to be influenced by the last person he's spoken to. So I think a chorus of European leaders making the rational case that you can achieve great things in Greenland, working with us rather than against us, might have some prospect of reigning him back. It has been the case in the past that he's threatened horrendous sanctions, 100%, 200%. I think once he threatened 200 % tariffs on French champagne, but that never happened and it was drained back and things came back, if not to their normal course, at least a slightly more rational approach to international relations.

7:10So Davos is an opportunity. It may not work, in which case the UK has to be ready to move on to other things with its European counterparts. When did we start using the term special relationship? I think really it started in the Second World War. And to be honest, it's always been a lopsided relationship. We've always been the junior partner to a more powerful America. But throughout those post-war decades, Britain really rated having this special relationship with the US, which was true in some areas in defense and intelligence and some areas of the economy. But, you know, when I used to accompany ministers to Washington, the American president they were meeting would always know that he had to say the special relationship as part of the press conference.

7:52Otherwise, the British prime minister would go home absolutely gutted. And there was a sort of special smile on their face when they said special relationship because they knew it was important. By the way, when the French go, they say our oldest ally, because, of course, the French were alongside them in the American Revolution with Lafayette and so on. So they have these stock phrases for a number of countries that I know are important, a bit totemic. And that's the case with this phrase special relationship, which Neil is not looking all that special as we speak. I look, though, at relationships that have clearly been personal between the leaders of the UK and the United States.

8:25And I think immediately of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Theirs was a special relationship, even if the one between the countries might not have been. Yes, it was. There was a real kind of chemical attraction between the two of them. But that didn't stop them having very difficult moments. In 1983, when I was working for Geoffrey Howe, the foreign secretary in his private office, the American Marines stormed up the beaches of a small Caribbean island called Grenada, which a nasty thuggish group of people had taken over, and they deposed them. But the problem is this was a Commonwealth country.

8:53The Queen was head of state, and Reagan failed to tell Maggie Thatcher he was going to do this. And Thatcher was absolutely furious in private, but she bit her lip in public and remained a loyal ally in public. I mean, there were big things at stake in the Cold War, but that shows that the relationship has never been smooth. There have been rocky moments throughout. Normally, British Prime Ministers have done what Keir Starmer is doing now, which is not escalate the row in public, but to take the tough talking behind closed doors. I'm just wondering, is this just an example of where the special relationship exists because the United States sees some utility in the United Kingdom.

9:31Yes, the special relationship, you could say, is rooted in shared language, shared history, investments, trade, defence, the nuclear relationship, intelligence. You can list areas where Britain and America are deeply, deeply intertwined, more so actually than any other European country. But now, in a way, you know, the strategic consequences of leaving the EU are coming home to roost because we find ourselves now outside the EU. The EU is the block with the real economic firepower to stand up to Donald Trump over threats of tariffs. We can't do that. We're a much smaller economy. So we're finding it's a rather more uncomfortable place to be outside the European Union, faced with an America which, yes, in some ways is still a special ally, but in others just treats us as another transactional partner, notwithstanding any special relationship.

10:21Would a closer relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union serve the purposes of the special relationship in that if we are this transatlantic bridge between the United States and the continent of Europe, we need to be in a position to be able to talk to them. And post Brexit, we just don't have that same ability. We can talk to them, but we've got less clout. That's absolutely clear. I think the combination of Putin and Trump and what they're doing is pushing Britain closer to the European Union all the time. I mean, the government have been trying to improve the relationship.

10:52I'd like to see that go further and faster, because I think in this world, you need to be close with your neighbors who share your values and your interests. And yeah, in a way, that would increase our clout with the Americans if we were part of this bigger structure. That's not going to happen anytime soon. But it did leave Keir Starmer today looking pretty awkward, explaining carefully all the benefits to us of the special relationship with the US, but not having a very good answer to the question of what we do if the Americans do go ahead and slap tariffs on us and other European countries.

11:22I think back again to September 11th, 2001, George W. Bush in the White House, and of course, Tony Blair in Downing Street here. And Tony Blair, very quickly through the United Kingdom's support behind the United States, why did he do that at that point? He's a conviction politician, Tony Blair. And I think his conviction, you know, in the hours after that 9-11 attack was, we must stand with America. America had been attacked unprovoked, 3 ,000 people killed. It could happen in London any day. And our position was with America. And in that, he's been very much in line with prime ministers since the Second World War, since Churchill, always seen our places in close to the Americans, best place to influence them and to sometimes guide them in the way we want them to go.

12:06That's now all gone. But yep, there have been for the the last five or six decades, the tradition has been that the British Prime Minister wants to stay very close to the American prisoners. With Afghanistan, I mean, there again is an example where the United States didn't listen to us at a very key point. We were the first to sign up in terms of the coalition. We were the second largest contributor in terms of numbers, second largest number of casualties and deaths, of course. And then came the withdrawal. And Joe Biden just pushed ahead without listening to anyone, least of all the United Kingdom.

12:38That's absolutely right. I mean, we went through hell with the Americans in those 20 years in Afghanistan. Not a great deal to show for it, it has to be said, but we were the most loyal of allies. And then at the end, we were not consulted either by Joe Biden or then by Donald Trump in his dealings with the Taliban. So another reminder that America is a superpower. In the end, America will follow America's interests. If Britain can help and support that, fine. But if they don't think we're relevant, you know, they have no compunction about going ahead without talking to us. I mean, that is the nature of this special relationship.

13:10As I said, it's unbalanced. It's lopsided. It's always been so. It feels even more so today. Is it time to end the whole charade then? To stop referring to it in these terms and pretending that the rest of the world can't see what the politicians can see? and, of course, the diplomats like yourself, that this is not a proper relationship because it's not a relationship of equals. Well, it's not a relationship of equals. I think I'd rather we just never talked about a special relationship. But we shouldn't forget that Britain is very, very dependent on the Americans in a number of areas. You know, our strategic nuclear missiles are basically American missiles that they service for us and then we take and put on our submarines.

13:46The intelligence relationship deeply, deeply intertwined. the F-35 fighter jet. It depends on American software to keep it flying and keep it safe. So we can't turn our back on the Americans. We've made a decision, which was on perfectly rational grounds for decades, that they were our closest ally. We would make ourselves dependent on them in order to get the best equipment, the most cutting-edge equipment for our armed forces, the best intelligence they have. But that does leave us very, very closely involved with them, when we can't simply turn our back. But we have to be very, very clear and lucid about what the relationship means.

14:21There are no special favours for us. There are no shortcuts for us. They will treat us like any other country across the board unless we have something really special to bring to the party ourselves. We can't turn our backs on the working relationship with the United States. But do we really have to roll over in quite the way that we seem to often do, particularly with this president? Well, we haven't been alone in doing a certain amount of flattering. Some people say appeasing. I think that's probably a bit of a harsh word. I mean, to be fair with Keir Starmer, he's been prepared to be quite tough on public.

14:51He came out immediately and said, slapping tariffs on allies is wrong, but he has not escalated the rhetoric. So I think that that's the right approach. It's not always terribly dignified, but trying to outshout Donald Trump is not going to work. And the more you rank up the rhetoric, the more he will, and that's not helpful to anyone. So I think that the nature of someone like Keir Starmer is to be rational, is to be calm, is to keep looking at the key issue. That can come across as him pulling his punches. But I think, to be fair, that's probably the best way to get Britain's voice heard, to be polite while firm in public, but to be tougher behind closed doors.

15:26It's a big part of the problem then here, Peter, the rhetoric that we use when analysing the relationship between the two, not just the term, the special relationship itself, but we've heard talk from senior politicians of being bullied, in inverted commas, by the United States, that when someone is telling you what to do, that you must stand up and show strength against them. That rhetoric describes relationship between individuals. I'm not so sure it describes the relationship between a head of state and a head of government. No, it doesn't. And it doesn't take account of where we stand in our relationship with the Americans.

15:58I mean, when I look back to the decision to leave the EU in 2016, that now looks like a real strategic misjudgment because it has left us outside our neighbourhood block, facing an America which is not as reliable and predictable as it was, and having to deal with that reality. So I think all British Prime Ministers are conscious of that. They're conscious of what we've got at stake as a country. We need to protect our vital interests with the Americans, but we need to be developing a much closer relationship with Europe again. That's a very difficult balancing act to achieve. Keir Starmer is doing his best.

16:29In many ways, it would have been better, with hindsight, if we'd stayed much closer to our European partners, because we find now we have the same interests, the same values. we're facing the same problems in dealing with an America that's increasingly unpredictable and we need to be as close to them as we possibly can. Do we need to be thinking in terms of describing our relationship with the European Union perhaps as the special relationship? I think we shouldn't use the term at all you know Neil. It's had a lot of mileage over the decades. It's very Churchillian. It's a bit presumptuous anyway.

16:58In this world even more so perhaps than 50 years ago each nation has to look out for its own interests. It will pursue its own interests in a completely unsentimental way. The idea that any nation is a special relationship with America, with Britain, let's face it, you know, we're all nations trying to protect our own interests, doing what we feel we need to do. We have always felt, and I think we're right, that we can do it best collectively with allies and partners, not the kind of strong man, might is right approach, but something which reflects the fact that international relations work best when there are some international norms which protect the smaller and weaker from the larger and more powerful.

17:37Peter, thanks for joining us. Thank you very much. Thanks for listening. The Daily is back again tomorrow.