55:26
British politicians have long touted their relationship with America as something special. But, amid the war in Iran and with Donald Trump's withering criticism of Britain's Prime Minister and his general disregard for his country's allies, that bond is fraying. Yet, Britain keeps trying. Next week, playing to the president's penchant for pomp, King Charles will be deployed to Washington in an attempt to win back Donald Trump's affection. Will it be enough? So, let's start with what's special and we've got a little montage that our wonderful video colleagues have put together, which is in, you know, precisely 1 minute, the history of the special relationship. Let's have a look at it.
The bond between our countries is like no other anywhere in the world. Britain remains our most powerful naval neighbor in the Atlantic. A special relationship between the United States and the British Commonwealth. Mr. Churchill's first act is to hand him a letter from the king. There will be no United States involvement in these present hostilities. We are not going to put any troops into the fighting in Vietnam.
I've been fortunate to enjoy such a close professional and personal rapport and a genuine friendship with Margaret Thatcher. That's why Derry's Guildhall got the most rapturous welcome of the day. Mr. Prime Minister Tony, as I like to call you. We therefore here in Britain stand shoulder to shoulder with our American friends. It is my pleasure to bring from His Majesty the King a letter an unprecedented second I strongly dislike the Iranian regime, but I think it was a mistake to enter conflict. I'm not happy with the UK, either.
This is not Winston Churchill that we're dealing with. And it was Winston Churchill who coined the phrase special relationship. Tell me what you think he was referring to when he coined that and set off this great relationship. Yeah, I'm glad that you go back to that in Fulton, Missouri. It was just after the war, remember? And there was a sense that two catastrophes had destroyed huge amounts of people and countries, and it was a terrible situation that Churchill wanted to prevent. And this special relationship was much more than about kind of working together in intelligence and material. It was about values. He talked about the common shared values, not just of Britain and America, but of the English-speaking
peoples in a sense trying to kind of refit empire to work alongside America. And he was incredibly ambitious. He talked about the safety and welfare for the progress and the freedom for all the homes and families and all the men and women of all the lands. He was really wanted to try create something to protect the world from what he saw as dangerous communism. And in that speech he talked about the iron curtain dropping from Stettin to Trieste. It's a measure of what he wanted, but it's also a measure of just how kind of short we've fallen of that. I want to really emphasize we've had these ruptures before, mini ruptures, right? And you can think of Suez. That was a huge rupture,
transatlantic rupture between the US and France and Britain over the Anglo-French invasion of the Suez Canal Zone in Egypt to the point where the US used economic coercion against its allies. We had Vietnam, but also 1973 and the Yom Kippur War. I think I'm right in saying Britain banned U-2 overflights, U-2 flights taking off from the UK during the conflict because they didn't approve of US policy on Israel. We have had these bumps before and the other one I'll mention is I think the refusal under the last when Ed Miliband was leader of the opposition, the blockage of strikes on Syria under the Cameron government. And that was pretty rocky. But no, this I think is I think this
is bigger because it's occurring in conjunction with so many other things. That steady sustained loss of British capability, America turning structurally away from Europe and therefore not needing the UK as a prominent Atlantic partner in the same way. This profound cultural change taking place in both countries, but particularly in the UK which I think we still embrace to a substantial degree multiculturalism and the idea of Britain as a multi-ethnic, multicultural country. And America of course has profoundly changed its attitude towards that or at least has become more polarized on that question. And that I think is driving this disillusionment perhaps we could call it, this loss of the romance of that
history. I think it's really striking that after Suez, which was a huge rupture, Britain's conclusion was it needed to get closer to the United States. And as we were saying earlier, it was just a couple of years after that that really crucial nuclear agreement was signed between the US and Britain. I don't think we're going in that direction after this. But you and I mean I think of you of all of us as the sort of the embodiment of the values of the transatlantic alliance. Do you share that view that it is sort of fundamentally now over or do you think this is a big bump? I go back to that Churchill speech. The shared values were where he started. If you look at particularly
Republicans view of Britain and Europe as having departed from those values, of having in a way betrayed those values. That is a profound problem because Americans think that the Europeans and Britain in particular have in a way deserted them. But Britain's also feel that Americans have deserted them, that they no longer embody those shared values. And a relationship that disagrees about a war in you know, Vietnam is one thing, but a relationship that disagrees about profound values is much harder to rebuild.
