The Myths and Crisis of a ‘Special Relationship’

As Keir Starmer touches down in Washington the British media uniformly continue the now bizarre folklore of a ‘Special Relationship’ between Britain and the US. This is long past its sell-by-date but now has reached a level of absurdity that it is only sustained by a combination of lazy journalism and false-status syndrome.

Nowhere in the British media have I seen any analysis of the huge issue that hangs over the country (and particularly Scotland) of Trident. With a United States government that is openly and proudly an ally of Russia, how can it make any sense at all that the nuclear submarines based at Faslaner and Coulport on the Clyde should or could act as a deterrent against attack?

As Sarah Kendzior puts it in response to the Krasnov allegation (that Trump is a Russian operative who uses that name) ‘We’re Already in the Aftermath‘: “Trump’s allegiance is to a transnational organized crime network in which the Kremlin is a key node. He has operated in this network for over half a century. His criminal ties are extensively documented in my book Hiding in Plain Sight, which contains hundreds of end notes to others’ work. Trump is a Kremlin asset: his activity benefits Russian officials and oligarchs and puts their interests before those of the US. This does not make him a secret agent or a spy. Trump is primarily a mafia associate, and it is through that lens that his rise should be examined.”

So why are we in a Special Relationship with this head of state? and how much did you say it costs?

The Cost of Trident

The government claimed in 2024 that the four new Dreadnought class submarines would cost £31bn plus a £10bn “contingency”. But the Nuclear Information Service (NIS), said in 2019 that the full cost of the nuclear weapons programme between 2019 and 2070 could be £172bn, when including new warheads and running costs. The Ministry of Defence puts the cost of the programme to replace the UK’s nuclear weapons at £118bn over the next decade. That was already £8bn more than the Treasury had forecast.

These are eye-watering costs for a defence system that is functionally useless. The reality is Britain gave up designing its own nuclear warheads a long time ago. If you think that Trident is independent from the USA I would refer you to a 2008 debate on the Trident programme and AWE’s (the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston) role in it, secured by Jeremy Corbyn. Bob Ainsworth, the minister for the armed forces in Gordon Brown’s government, said:

My honourable friend the member for Islington North raised a point that I need to respond to – he would want me to put this on the record. The UK produced a new design of nuclear weapon to coincide with the introduction into service of the Trident system.The warhead was designed and manufactured in the UK by AWE, although it was decided on cost-effectiveness grounds to procure certain non-nuclear warhead components from the United States. The design is likely to last into the 2020s.

Five years ago Pentagon officials said that plans for a new US warhead, the W93, ‘will also support a parallel replacement warhead programme in the United Kingdom’.

In 2020 the Guardian revealed that Ben Wallace, the then defence secretary, had lobbied the US Congressional Armed Service Committees to ask for Congressional funding for the W93 programme to ‘ensure that we continue to deepen the unique nuclear relationship between our two countries, enabling the United Kingdom to provide safe and assured continuous-at-sea deterrence for decades to come ... Your support to the W93 program in this budget cycle is critical to the success of our replacement warhead programme.’

As Norman Dombey has written: “The warhead of the current UK Trident system is called the Holbrook. It was not designed at Aldermaston. It is essentially a copy of the W76, designed at Los Alamos for the US Navy. Hans Kristiansen, the nuclear weapon specialist at the Federation of American Scientists, told me that the designs of the Holbrook and W76 are ‘so close that the Holbrook is part of the US W76 maintenance programme’, and any ‘British replacement warhead will likely rely on the W93 design and fully use the Mk7 RB [ reentry vehicle] designed for the W93.’

So the independent British nuclear deterrent is neither British, nor independent (nor a deterrent).

We are tied to a vastly expensive ‘ally’ that has completely different geopolitical needs and strategies to our stated ones. Not only that, but, as we explore below, this ‘ally’ is descending into a psychotic dysfunctional authoritarian state at a rate that – I was going to write ‘few could have predicted’ – but in actual fact most of us did.

Just after Starmer touched down, so too did Andrew and Tristan Tate. The brothers are charged with rape, human trafficking and organised crime in Romania, have been convicted of tax evasion in the UK, and are also facing extradition to the UK over allegations of rape and human trafficking. The timing of the Tate brothers departure from Romania comes after Donald Trump’s administration reportedly made multiple attempts to pressurise Romania to lift travel restrictions on them and represents a not-so-subtle signal to the incoming Prime Minister.

Matthew Jury, the legal representative of British women who have filed criminal complaints of rape and sexual assault against Andrew Tate said:

“The news that pressure by the Trump Administration has led to Andrew Tate, and his brother Tristan, being allowed to leave Romania by its authorities is equal parts disgusting and dismaying. There is clear evidence to support the allegations against Tate that he is one of the world’s worst human traffickers and serial rapists. That the US Government would choose to lobby for his release is absurd but sadly, given its actions over the past month, perhaps unsurprising. Any suggestion that the Tates will now face justice in Romania is fanciful. The UK authorities must take immediate steps to secure their extradition to the UK to face charges for the offences of human trafficking and rape they are alleged to have committed in this jurisdiction.”

None of this will happen. Starmer will do nothing. The Special Relationship consists of the US using the UK, and Scotland in particular, as a military base and occasional golf resort.

The Descent of America

However bad you thought it would be, it’s far worse. This week alone showed a catalogue of incidents marking America’s descent into a new form of dystopia. Here’s just a few of the lowlights.

Yesterday the President of America released on his own social media platform a widely shared video ‘Trump Gaza’ depicting an ethnically cleansed Gaza featuring luxury Trump Towers, gold Trump statues, and ends with himself and Benjamin Netanyahu sipping cocktails on the beach. It’s a grotesque new low in a Genocide Capitalism which gorges itself on sadistic spectacle and horrific childish self-parody.

Of course, building a holiday resort for the wealthy on mass graves would be an abomination, but no such thing is taking place, it is just a sick fantasy. It’s worth watching only to ask yourself: ‘Do you want to be in a special relationship with that?’ 

I’m not sure what good it would do but there’s a petition to get Meta: to Take down the Trump Gaza video here.

Elon Musk casually drops in the broadcast cabinet meeting that he “Cancelled Ebola protection” in his live run-through of how he is cutting $2 trillion from the US government.

Musk: “We accidentally cancelled Ebola protection”
– expects a laugh –
– doesn’t get one –
Trump can’t look at him.pic.twitter.com/VOT9GzPmFK

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) February 26, 2025

An unvaccinated child has died from measles in West Texas—the first measles death in the U.S. since 2015. According to health officials, the outbreak in rural West Texas has surged to 124 cases across nine counties, making it the state’s largest in nearly 30 years. RFK Jr tried to minimise it:

Q: A young child just died of measles in Texas. Do you have a comment?

RFK Jr.: It’s not unusual. We have measles outbreaks all the time

(This is the first Measles death in the US in 10 years) pic.twitter.com/af5hrqpjrG

— FactPost (@factpostnews) February 26, 2025

The assault on – even the pretence of a free media (Hi Noam!) is under direct attack. Parker Molloy writes: “Jeff Bezos, in continuing his trend of turning WaPo into his personal plaything, has announced that its opinion section will now exclusively focus on promoting “personal liberties and free markets.” The statement is shocking:

There’s a Fascist Militia forming. Erik Prince and former Blackwater officials, under a new name, pitch a $25 billion privatized force for mass deportation:

In Idaho a woman is dragged out of a public meeting by anonymous MAGA thugs …

There are places in this country that serve as tactial testing grounds, places where you can see the future before it arrives. Coeur D’Alene, Idaho is one of those places — I’ve written about it before

Today, men without badges detained a woman for speaking during a town hall https://t.co/211tjMiBlN pic.twitter.com/YODub4NMEY

— Laura Jedeed, she/her (@LauraJedeed) February 23, 2025

Trump’s own son suggests they would have been better arming Russia:

Donald Trump’s son suggests sending weapons to Russia instead of Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/keCqsgzLpF

— Jay in Kyiv (@JayinKyiv) February 26, 2025

MSNBC’s major programming overhaul seems like a purge of non-white hosts …

“That Feels Indefensible”: MSNBC’s New Direction Leads Rachel Maddow to Speak Out

Taken together these would be an incredible indictment of any country, but taken as a snapshot of a country we call an ‘ally’ and pretend to have a ‘special relationship’ with they are an indictment of us.

The British media’s role in this myth-making is key. It involves engaging in a sort of reverie for post-WW2 Britain, a Churchillian fantasy, with occasional harking back to Ronnie and Maggie, or maybe even Tony Blair and Dubya, back in the day when we thought that the worst possible President of the United States could have been George W Bush.

Key to this delusion is remembering Britain’s past, our Glory Days and this is the key to us maintaining our ‘independent nuclear deterrent’. But Camp David has been replaced by Mar-a-Lago and Bush and his neocon dynasty has been replaced by Trump and his genocidal AI dynasty.

What role should Britain play on the world stage? It’s a moot point. Britain no longer exists in any meaningful way.  But if you were a prime minister or a diplomat of the relic that is left, you could do better than show fealty to the deranged Trump-Musk regime and instead attend to the multiple problems at home.

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