Will the British Royals Rush in Where the Prime Minister Fears To Tread?

Way back in 1917, an editorial in the Spectator entitled “The United States and Britain” spoke thus: “It would be easy to write down a hundred reasons why unclouded friendship and moral co-operation between the United States and Britain are a benefit to the world, and why an interruption of such relations is a detriment to progress and a disease world-wide in its effects. “Quarrelling and misunderstanding between the British and American peoples are like a thing contrary to Nature. They are so contrary to Nature that the times of misunderstanding have always seemed to us abnormal, and a return to friendship not an achievement of wise diplomacy (as one might feel such a result to be in our relations with other countries) but merely a resumption of the normal.”Would that it were so simple. As in all close relationships, the emotional landscape we raise our respective flags against is rarely all rainbows and lollipops; after all, around 70,000 Americans were killed by the British during the Revolutionary War, both in combat and dying of disease on the fetid prison ships. There has been antagonism as well as affection throughout the “Special Relationship,” to use the phrase which was made famous by Winston Churchill in 1946.Then again, too, Churchill had an American mum, and gloried in his dual heritage. World War Two is often portrayed as the crucial moment of the Anglo-American love-in but it began with isolationism and ended in Lend-Lease, which this country only finally put paid to in 2006. We are encountering another bump in the road now, thanks to Sir Keir Starmer and his Toytown crew.They, with typical lack of suss, have made working with the Trump administration well nigh impossible by performing a variety of easily avoidable pratfalls, including sending Labour activists to campaign for their comrade, Kamala Harris, and having had the President be insulted by several Labour luminaries, including Sadiq Khan (“racist,” “sexist,” “homophobe”), Peter Mandelson (“a danger to the world and little short of a white nationalist”), and the actual foreign secretary, David Lammy (“a neo-Nazi sociopath”).These dolts having screwed up the special relationship on the political front, the monarchy must be wheeled out to meet cute and play nice with Mr Trump. Meaning, “senior members of the royal family” are “being lined up for a U.S. visit,” according to the Times. “Donald Trump has a clear affinity for the royal family,” a senior government source tells the Times. “He had a great relationship with the late Queen, recently met Prince William and has spoken highly of King Charles. A royal tour to the U.S. would help reinforce the ‘special relationship.’”Really? I’m not so convinced by this, painting as it does a portrait of President Trump — a shrewd and worldly man — as some kind of gee-shucks fan-boy. Just as one can imagine the royals being tolerantly baffled by Mr. Trump’s antics, one also imagines the president thinking how shabby Buck Pal was — not a patch on Mar-a-Lago.Mr. Trump has previously said that he had “automatic chemistry” with the Queen — which I bet came as a surprise to her. He met her in Britain during his first term in the White House. He has opined that King Charles is a “really wonderful guy” but I bet he’s still wondering why he preferred Camilla to Diana; I can’t imagine what Charles makes of Trump, but I bet those plants he talks to have heard a few staccato mutters of “appalling” and “frightful” as they patiently wait for their watering.Not that I don’t hope that the UK and the US become besties again, if only for the sake of my beloved Brexit. Many surveys show that nothing bonds two people faster than disliking a third party. So I felt a surge of affection towards the POTUS when I read that he’d said of the EU “They treat us very, very badly — they’re going to be in for tariffs.” The US was already our biggest foreign investor, putting in considerably more than all the countries of the EU combined.At last, due to the half-strange, half-sensible man who has won his country back so conclusively — like Brexit itself, the idea of the referendum being half common sense, half fever dream — maybe the special relationship can become a mutually beneficial reality, rather than a cross between a one-sided crush and a full-blown S&M session, and bring the two countries back to the normalcy of which Churchill spoke.

Will the British Royals Rush in Where the Prime Minister Fears To Tread?

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