Trump says US-UK relationship ‘not like it used to be’

LONDON - US President Donald Trump said the historical relationship between his country and Britain was “not like it used to be”, in an interview to British daily newspaper The Sun, amid a major transatlantic fall out over

US-Israeli strikes against Iran.

“This was the most solid relationship of all. And now we have very strong relationships with other countries in Europe,” he said, singling out France and Germany, after British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s initial refusal to allow the United States to use British military bases in its war with Iran.

Mr Trump said Mr Starmer “has not been helpful”, adding: “I never thought I’d see that. I never thought I’d see that from the UK. We love the UK.”

In a telephone interview from the White House on the evening of March 2, Mr Trump said: “This was the most solid relationship of all. And now we have very strong relationships with other countries in Europe.”

“It’s a different world, actually. It’s just a much different kind of relationship that we’ve had with your country before.

“It’s very sad to see that the relationship is obviously not what it was,” he added.

The scathing comments come a day after Mr Trump described Mr Starmer’s reaction as “very disappointing” in an interview with The Daily Telegraph.

He added that Mr Starmer’s later decision to

allow the use of British bases

on specific grounds as “useful” but said it “took far too much time”.

Any potential military action in the Middle East is politically sensitive in Britian following former prime minister Tony Blair’s disastrous support for the US-led invasion of Iraq.

‘National interest’

Mr Starmer defended his position

to Parliament on March 2.

“President Trump has expressed his disagreement with our decision not to get involved in the initial strikes, but it is my duty to judge what is in Britain’s national interest,” he told lawmakers.

“That is what I have done and I stand by it,” he added.

After initially refusing to have any role in the strikes, Mr Starmer on March 1 announced that he had agreed to a US request to use British military bases for a “specific and limited defensive purpose”.

His Downing Street office said Mr Starmer took the decision after Iran fired missiles over the weekend that put British interests and people “at risk”.

“We all remember the mistakes of Iraq, and we have learnt those lessons. Any UK actions must always have a lawful basis and a viable thought-through plan,” he added in Parliament.

The prime minister also said that British military bases in Cyprus “are not being used by US bombers” during the US-Israeli war with Iran.

‘Not-so special relationship’

British politicians have been haunted by the 2003 Iraq war, in which a reported 179 UK soldiers died.

An official UK inquiry into the conflict later found that Mr Blair acted on flawed intelligence when deciding to join the war.

Ms Evie Aspinall, director of the British Foreign Policy Group think tank, told AFP Mr Starmer faced a “very tight diplomatic tightrope” with the United States, “which remains critical in the context of Ukraine and Greenland”.

Mr Richard Whitman, an expert on international relations at the University of Kent, added that Mr Trump’s remarks might herald a “new, not-so-special relationship”.

The worry for London was any “spillover” on Ukraine and the possibility of Mr Trump getting a “bee in his bonnet” about the UK.

“That would be clearly disastrous for the UK,” he said.

The situation might be salvaged with a “bold announcement on defence spending uplifts”, said Ms Sophia Gaston, a foreign policy research fellow at King’s College London. AFP