As dead as a dodo

The Prime Minister didn’t need to meet Joe Biden in New York to be told that the Tory dream of an Anglo-American free trade agreement was dead as the dodo. Truss didn’t need to be reminded that the Biden administration is determined to uphold the Northern Ireland protocol and support the Irish position and that of the rest of the European Union. Nor would she be too happy to see Biden dismiss Tory economic dogma to tell the world that he was 'sick and tired of trickle-down economics' which never work. What she hoped to achieve at this meeting on the fringe of the UN General Assembly remains to be seen. But crawling to the Americans comes as second nature to those sections of the British ruling class who believe that their global interests are best preserved through the might of US imperialism. The politicians who serve them on both sides of the House call it the “special relationship” – a term first used by Winston Churchill in 1946 at the start of the Cold War.
    Churchill, the war-time Tory leader turfed out of Downing Street by Labour at the general election in the previous summer, may not have inspired the Anglo-American pact that was being built by the new Attlee administration. But he certainly started the myth of the “special relationship” claiming it was an alliance of equals who shared a common history, a common language and a common literature and therefore a common destiny in defending what Western leaders were already starting to call the “free world”. It was, in fact, a delusion, or as maverick Labour MP Peter Kilfoyle would say many years later only “special” in the sense that it was a one-way road.
    The strategy of the British bourgeoisie following the establishment of the Common Market in 1957 was to act as a trans-Atlantic bridge to defend their global imperialist interests by playing off Europe against America. But the “bridge” to Europe was burned by Tony Blair when he threw in his lot with Bush over Iraq while Washington sees no need to heed any “special” British concerns because Britain now has no one else to turn to for support.
    If Liz Truss does not break with the die-hard Ulster Unionists she will never get back into Biden’s good books let alone build a post-Brexit understanding with Franco-German imperialism. That is, of course, her problem not ours.
    The Treaty of Rome or the ‘Treaty of Washington’ – either way there’s nothing in it for workers. We need to argue for an end to the American alliance which is dragging us into a conflict with Russia that has already sent the cost of energy spiralling. We need to confront the labour bureaucracy and the fake left posers who support the trans-Atlantic alliance and NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine.
    Above all we must campaign for an end to the fighting in Ukraine and for a just and lasting peace in eastern Europe. This can only come with a neutral and de-Nazified Ukraine that recognises the independence of the Donbas republics, Crimea’s decision to join the Russian Federation and equal rights for all the people of the regions of the Ukraine.