The Special Relationship: Circa 2019
On Feb. 16, 1944, Winston Churchill said it was his “deepest conviction that unless Britain and the United States are joined in a special relationship, another destructive war will come to pass.”
“England and America are two countries separated by the same language!” Attributed to George Bernard Shaw (and others)
Returning to London for the first time since 2017, the relations between the United Kingdom and the United States are again, a matter of considerable interest. If Prime Minister Boris Johnson finally succeeds in getting the country out of the European Union, the need for closer economic ties with the U.S. will become even more important — along with cultural and political relations since the divorce with Europe has become increasingly acrimonious.
There are striking parallels in the moods of these two nations. The British have Johnson and Brexit. The Americans have Donald Trump and impeachment. Prince Harry and Meaghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, generate enough gossip for the prince to sue the tabloid newspapers demanding that they leave his wife alone. In Washington, paparazzi camp outside of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump’s Kalorama home. A modern couple? Or more trouble than they are worth.
At the local multi-screen theater near where we were staying, five of the six films were American, including Jennifer Lopez-produced “Hustlers” and Renée Zellweger vehicle “Judy”. The sixth was “Downton Abbey,” the number one film in the United States the week it opened.
Julian Fellowes, creator of “Downton Abbey,” is now working on his next series about the grand families of Newport Rhode Island in the Gilded Age.
My first visit to London was in the 1950s as a teenager. I have lived there for two-year stretches in what was called “Swinging London” in the l960s and Margaret Thatcher’s Britain in the 1980s. My Polish refugee parents gave me a middle name of Winston. I am therefore not a stranger to the rhythms of England’s capital and always find time there fascinating and entertaining. I go there to enjoy many old friends, familiar iconic buildings and parks, great theater and Britain’s ironic sense of humor, a personal favorite. I once published a book about Monty Python and cohorts titled: “A Great Silly Grin.”
Today, traditional British fashion and style are still available, but the dominant vibe on London streets is the relaxed clothes and gear that have become the standard in first world cities. Iphones and earbuds are omnipresent.
Whereas London’s population in the 1960s was overwhelmingly white, the city is said to be 40 percent composed of what are known there and in New York as “people of color.” In New York, the majority of students in the most selective public schools have Asian backgrounds. A University of London professor, an expert on education, told me in state schools those with Asian backgrounds were considered to be the best students.
Another parallel: In the U.S. we had Donald Trump and payoffs to Stormy Daniels, the pornographic actress and stripper. Currently in the U.K. there is a scandal brewing about Boris Johnson and his friend, Jennifer Arcuri — a former model, amateur pole dancer and technology expert. When he was Mayor of London, Johnson visited her many afternoons, she said, to discuss Shakespeare. Johnson’s appeal to women inside, outside and around marriage is now accepted. The wrinkle is that Arcuri received grants and official favors throughout Johnson’s tenure in office.
But just as Trump has enthralled and appalled different sectors of the American public, Johnson and Brexit are obsessive issues at least until that matter is resolved. A common aphorism about the situations in the two countries is that “the Trump era has to end. Brexit is forever.” The stakes are very high.
Many of our friends have been in British journalism and public life for decades. Among them there is a cross-section of opinion from adamant Brexit to fierce Remain, but all agree that whatever happens, major damage has been done in the struggle over the past three years. There are those who believe that Brexit will be disruptive to the country for the foreseeable future and then things will settle down. “There will always be an England,” even if the sun has long ago set on the British Empire. Whether Scotland will vote to secede, and Northern Ireland will eventually unite with Ireland is a whole other topic, though for the moment less fraught.
At the other end of the spectrum are those who believe that Brexit will mean that the United Kingdom will be a bunch of islands off the coast of Europe of lesser interest to both the European Union and the United States of America, let alone Canada, where Queen Elizabeth is still the Sovereign.
I have one friend — an “old Etonian,” an alumnus of the same private school that Boris Johnson went to — who says that Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn is a progressive radical underestimated and misunderstood by moderates in Labor and the country and reviled by the Conservatives. Another friend who was in Tony Blair’s cabinet said she is so disgusted with both Corbyn and the current Conservative party that she wonders whether her career in politics was wasted given how the parties have turned out. Perhaps the definitive opinion came from Martin Wolf, the most senior columnist at the Financial Times who wrote last week: “The Conservative Party has become an English nationalist party. Meanwhile, the hard left has seized Labor. The curse of extremist politics has only just begun.”
Another striking feature of London this fall is how many issues are those inundating American discussion and social media — the power of the “me too,” movement, gender identity and unisex toilets, immigration, continuing racism and, overall, political correctness. Britain’s traditional version of the 1 percent known as the “posh” are vilified aside from those in the glamour class of entertainers and influencers who are celebrated in all forms of media, the British version of the Kardashians.
I did see one observation which might cause a stir in America. Hugo Rifkind, the television critic of the London Times writing about “RuPaul’s Drag Race” said: “Drag is not transgenderism,” he wrote, “with the fake tits and hair, the sexualized names (Cheryl Hole, Vinegar Strokes) the insane battle paint and quips about ageing and being a slut, it feels less like a tribute to femininity than a satirical assault on it. I mean drag is basically blackface, isn’t it? Parodying the other, while taking the piss.”
How will the political, social and cultural dynamic in the U.K. evolve? This is the same question that confounds the U.S. as the presidential election season gains momentum and daily revelations emerge, changing norms of what is considered acceptable behavior now or in the past.
The assumption was that Britain would endure the Brexit crisis as it has so many challenges over the centuries. But there is no written constitution in the U.K. Governance is based on precedent and customs. For the moment that tradition is under acute strain as Johnson tried to get his Brexit deal without the consent of Parliament. And Trump and his White House are refusing the cooperate with the House impeachment inquiry as though Congress was not a co-equal branch of government.
After a week in London, I think it is fair to conclude that no one can really say there or “across the pond,” as the U.S. is described, how the next year and beyond will unfold. There definitely is still a “Special Relationship” but not the one Churchill or Franklin Delano Roosevelt, bedrock counterparts in World War II, could have imagined.
