It is impossible to overstate the depth of mutual trust enjoyed for decades by British and American leaders. When I visited the headquarters of the US National Security Agency as foreign secretary in 2011 my hosts said they could not imagine inviting a minister from any other country but the UK. Yet it felt completely natural to spend the day there in Fort Meade, Maryland, in the very centre of the world’s most all-seeing intelligence agency, with secrets readily shared and every discovery discussed in the manner of old friends.
The collaboration between the NSA and our own formidable GCHQ is intense, and not far behind comes the close partnership between our other security agencies, armed forces and diplomats. The only telephone in my office that connected straight to the desk of a counterpart was one that rang instantly on the desk of the US secretary of state. At the United Nations, I would sit next to Hillary Clinton, and later John Kerry, always voting together, co-ordinating our arguments, and often going to dinner afterwards to gossip about everyone else. Picture this going on for many years, between PMs and presidents as well as foreign ministers, and you have some idea of what might be the closest relationship between two countries that has ever existed.
We should all hope that this trusting alliance will continue. Many senior people are working hard to maintain it. Sir Keir Starmer has put great effort into creating a good relationship with President Trump, who is in turn affectionate towards Britain. Today’s foreign secretary spends time with Vice-President Vance, and the respective defence secretaries have hit it off well. Yet everyone knows there is a new fragility in the old friendship, underlined by it being unclear, as I write this on Monday, the extent to which the US will impose tariffs on British exports by Thursday. Perhaps tariffs will come in and then be reversed. Perhaps they will go sharply up and down on a whim. Nobody knows. And when doubt replaces trust, any relationship is bound to change.
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The ministers working hard to maintain trust with the Trump administration are absolutely doing the right thing. Our national interest will always lie in a strong transatlantic bond. If they fail, they will have to keep trying. But doubt is creeping in. If the US sells out Ukraine, or lifts sanctions on Russia when we don’t, or intensifies the bullying of Denmark over Greenland, what do we do? What if we pick up some secrets we feel we can’t give them? What if we are one day in a war when they don’t want to help? So close has been the relationship that for British politicians, generals, spooks and ambassadors, such thoughts are not just distressing but actually disorientating.
It is like suddenly realising your best friend, with whom you’ve been down the pub for many years, is behaving strangely. You’re so trusting you’ve gone into business together; your families are close and you tell each other everything. But something is different. Your old mate is threatening other customers, cosying up to a well-known fraudster and refusing to buy another round. You’re worried they might even smash up the pub. Have they had one too many or has their personality changed? You know you have to soothe and calm them. But quietly, you move your bar stool a few inches, look round for your other friends and check you can still stand up for yourself in a fight.
The British government is rightly doing its best to soothe and calm. Even if heavy tariffs hit UK goods this week, we should be reluctant to respond in kind. Not only is it in our interest to avoid a general trade war but American companies and their services have become vital to our economy. The best hope of being a major force in AI and new technology lies in partnership with the US. Yet we should also be sufficiently clear-eyed about the change in our old friend to adjust, to get over our disorientation as soon as possible, and to ensure we can indeed stick up for ourselves rather better than we can manage today.
How do we do this while staying as close as we can to America? First, we have to do more with other allies on defence, which is largely what Trump wants us to do. Ministers are already negotiating a new defence pact with the EU that they hope will give British firms access to the massive boost to defence spending in Europe. Creating over the next decade a “European pillar” of Nato which takes over many capabilities and responsibilities from the US would also be the right policy. We should also offer Canada an enhanced relationship in defence technology while continuing the Aukus partnership with Australia and the US.
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Second, we need to fill gaps in critical technologies by encouraging new firms and helping them to stay British-owned. Rachel Reeves said last week she wanted the UK to be a “defence industrial superpower”. That is the right ambition but will need turbocharging by setting up task forces with innovators that can break through stifling procurement rules. It should be guided to replace, over time, the dependence on the US for a mass of components and software without which a large part of our own defences cannot function. New schemes to support promising start-ups so long as they remain based in the UK should be considered, and reforms to pension funds to provide more capital for UK firms accelerated.
Third, we should go out of our way, as a matter of great urgency, to attract the world’s most talented scientists and researchers — very much including Americans. Of all the emerging policies of the Trump administration, the least rational is the attack on science and aspects of advanced medicine. Severe cuts to America’s National Institutes of Health, hostility to mRNA vaccines and withdrawal of grants for any work relating to climate will make some of the world’s most brilliant minds search for new shores. Britain should be their home.
The normal form of Whitehall will be to take months to draft a new policy, while ministers argue over immigration numbers. We need to act immediately. Review the visa system for high-skilled applicants in days, not months. Cut the visa fees now for skills in key technologies. Reinforce our commitment to free speech and thinking. Match the EU’s increase in relocation allowances for top researchers, for they are on to this. As Churchill would have put it: Action This Day.
After decades in which we could take deep trust with Washington for granted, we need to keep working to keep that alive but nevertheless adjust. In a world changing so quickly, even such an adjustment needs urgency, clarity and drive to do more for ourselves, however unfamiliar that may be.
