So Scotland Yard is complaining that its overly "edgy" American counterparts almost blew the arrest of the terrorists convicted this week of plotting to blow up several transatlantic flights, by moving prematurely to have one of them arrested in Pakistan. It just shows, say those who deny there is a "special relationship" between the US and the UK, how America ignores the advice of its partner. Not so: the key point is that our countries' security services worked in (imperfect) harmony for several months, and to a successful conclusion. Thousands of lives were spared.
Last week's anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War also produced unkind words about the special relationship. The indictment of America for treating that relationship as a one-way street, one in which America demands much of Britain in return for little, is not new. After the war, when President Truman abruptly ended Lend-Lease, Britain was forced to negotiate a loan that, despite the best efforts of its brilliant negotiator, John Maynard Keynes, many viewed as onerous. Worse even than that, in some eyes, was what they saw as Dwight Eisenhower's scuppering what would have been a successful effort to unseat Nasser after he nationalised the Suez canal.
Fast-forward to more recent times and we have the Iraq war, into which special-relationship deniers say Tony Blair led the nation merely "to get up the a––– of the White House and stay there", as your then-ambassador, Christopher Meyer, so elegantly described his instructions.
You get the idea: the special relationship is a myth, useful when Winston Churchill wanted to induce Franklin Roosevelt to come to his aid, but increasingly a delusion that results in a British foreign policy that serves American interests.
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