Eighty years ago today, Winston Churchill coined the phrase ‘Special Relationship’ to describe the bond between the United States and Great Britain. That label for the close trans-Atlantic friendship, based on a common history, language and culture, and shared political and economic interests, has been repeatedly invoked ever since. Although it has frequently come under strain – notably during the Suez Crisis in 1956, and the Falklands War in 1982 – the US and UK have remained largely aligned. The two countries have broadly sung in chorus from the same song sheet. But can the ‘Special Relationship’ survive Donald Trump and Keir Starmer?

Is it too much to hope that Sir Keir Starmer will follow Eden’s inglorious example?

Never before this week has an American president openly expressed such blistering contempt for a British leader as Donald Trump when he branded Keir Starmer ‘no Churchill’ – surely the understatement of the century. Speaking at the White House in the presence of – oh, irony of ironies – the visiting German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who has played things far more cleverly than Starmer when it comes to the US action against Iran – the president also slammed Starmer’s ‘stupid’ initial refusal to let the US use the base of Diego Garcia in the Chagos islands to attack Iran.

Trump has clearly repented of the warm words he has used about the Prime Minister in the past, now that Starmer has come out in his true yellow colours as a fair weather friend. The president has seen Starmer for what he is: a leader who will dither and prevaricate when the chips are down rather than stand firm for the true interests of both Britain and the US.

In the wake of Trump’s criticism, Starmer’s already precarious political position has become even more fragile. His failure to support Britain’s strongest ally doesn’t only call his personal future into question. It puts the much prized special relationship under the microscope as well.

Trump has not only seen the light about Starmer’s craven character, but has also realised what an appalling ‘deal’ the surrender of Chagos to Mauritius, the Chinese puppet state, is as well.

Starmer’s diminishing band of supporters have defended him by claiming that however hopeless he is on the home front, he has been adept at handling foreign affairs, striding the international stage like a colossus on his frequent jaunts abroad. That claim has now proved as hollow as the rest of Labour’s pretensions to competence. To alienate our closest ally and abandon the Atlantic alliance in order to appease his party’s left is, in Kemi Badenoch’s words, ‘weak and pathetic’ beyond belief.

Trump is right; ‘This is not the age of Churchill’. And compared to that titan, Starmer does indeed appear as a panicked Pygmy, utterly unable to offer leadership to a country crying out for it, either in peace or war.

Whatever we may think of the wisdom of the joint US-Israeli attacks on Iran, the conduct of the air campaign, and the apparent lack of a clear plan to win the war, the bald fact remains that British assets and bases have come under attack from a malevolent and implacably hostile power. Despite this obvious threat, our Prime Minister dismally failed to rise to the level of events. The action he was finally forced to take was too little and too late.

When it came to the crunch, the Royal Navy that once ruled the waves could only muster a single destroyer, HMS Dragon, to sail to the war zone. At the time of writing, she is still sitting in Portsmouth harbour and will anyway take a week to reach her destination, Cyprus, where she will help protect RAF Akrotiri from ballistic missiles and drone attacks. The war could be over by the time she arrives.

The decline in British power and prestige since Churchill rose on that March day in Fulton, Missouri has rarely appeared so dizzying as this week. In 1957, a British prime minister, Sir Anthony Eden, was forced to resign after his deception and impetuous foolishness in the Suez Crisis which spelt the end of Empire in the Middle East, was humiliatingly exposed. Is it too much to hope that Sir Keir Starmer will follow Eden’s inglorious example?