00:00Let's talk to Dr. Andrew Saunders, the Senior Lecturer in Politics at De Montfort University in Leicester.
00:06Andrew, Mr. Trump has said the special relationship is not what it was. What do you make of it all?
00:12Yes, certainly I think that the relationship between the US and the UK has been evolving,
00:17particularly since the end of the Cold War.
00:19Obviously, the strategic importance of the UK for the US has changed quite a bit since then.
00:24But we also noticed since the Obama administration, the fact that Obama, as someone who grew up in Hawaii,
00:31typically looked to the west of the United States, to Asia, to China, Japan and so on,
00:38somewhat more so than he did towards the UK for policy, particularly in terms of international alliances.
00:45I think that that's had an impact as well.
00:48In terms of how the special relationship, as we've called it over the best part of a century at this
00:54point,
00:55I think that it continues to evolve.
00:57There are a lot of questions as to whether or not the UK still has a favourable membership in that
01:03special relationship.
01:04Obviously, we know the Prime Minister managed to negotiate our way out of some of the tariffs that Trump has
01:10been imposing,
01:10but then it's not clear that that will actually hold.
01:12So I think that it's certainly strained, but the UK is definitely doing its best to maintain its part in
01:19the relationship.
01:20And a lot of questions remain as to how important President Trump sees the United Kingdom going forward.
01:25The UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer argues Britain should not join a war without a plan.
01:31Is that a genuine strategic concern, or is he simply worried about domestic political positioning,
01:38particularly within his own Labour Party?
01:41Yes, certainly.
01:42I think that it's a little bit of both, obviously.
01:46We understand that international security is a matter of paramount importance.
01:50I think that the Prime Minister does have to balance those genuine strategic concerns.
01:57Obviously, as was mentioned in one of the clips there,
02:00there's a lot of concern about what Iran does in terms of its behaviour in the Middle East,
02:05in terms of what it may or may not do to Israel and how that may impact a number of
02:09allies in the region.
02:12And certainly, you know, we've seen the impact domestically in terms of the price of the pumps,
02:17which is something that people who are dealing with a cost-of-living crisis are very concerned about.
02:21So that kind of segues into the conversation about domestic political positioning.
02:26I think it's absolutely a major issue for him at the moment.
02:31I think the Labour Party is in a very difficult position.
02:34There are elections coming up.
02:36The Labour Party is predicted to lose a significant number of seats across those forthcoming elections.
02:41And we saw in the recent by-election the Labour Party dropping to third in Gorton and Denton.
02:46And so the party is damaged.
02:48The Prime Minister wants to try and recoup some energy going into the second half of his term.
02:53And it's really hard to see where that comes from.
02:56So I think it's a little bit of both.
02:58But certainly the domestic dimension plays quite importantly, I think.
03:02Governments and diplomats around the world simply hoping that all of these many strained relationships
03:08with the United States will be reset and healed after President Trump's term in office.
03:18Yeah, I think that that's definitely something that people are looking at.
03:22What will happen when President Trump is no longer in office?
03:25Obviously, the trends of recent U.S. political elections and political movements that we've seen across the U.S.
03:37suggest that we may see a change of party, certainly in Congress, in the midterms that are coming up at
03:43the end of this year,
03:44but then in the presidential election a couple of years after that.
03:49So people are looking forward.
03:51How are things looking in the U.S.?
03:53What are the implications for the U.K.?
03:55So I think that maintaining a good relationship as much as possible is important.
04:00But I think it's also important to note that the way that President Trump has been behaving in terms of
04:05international policy
04:06is quite inconsistent with how it might have been had the Democrats won the presidential election
04:11and Kamala Harris was the president.
04:13So it's quite a tricky thing for the diplomats to really navigate that.
04:18And I think that's one of the reasons that was playing in the prime minister's mind
04:22when he put Peter Mandelson in as the ambassador to the U.S.
04:26as someone who understood the kind of broader history of U.S.-U.K. relations in the 21st century.
04:33And obviously that in itself has created further problems for the prime minister.
04:38So the Trump era has caused a lot of problems for the U.K. in terms of its diplomatic relationships.
04:43And I think that everyone is hoping for a slightly calmer second half in office.
04:49Perhaps changes domestically in the U.S. can facilitate that.
04:52Andrew, good to see you. Thank you for that.
04:53Dr. Andrew Sanders, the senior lecturer in politics at De Montfort University in Leicester.
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