For the record.
The End of Illusions: Britain Must Confront a Post-American World.
For decades, Britain has operated under a comforting fiction: that no matter the turbulence of global politics, the United States would always stand behind the “special relationship.” That illusion is now over.
No serious British government ever planned for a scenario in which an American president would simply turn away. Yet that is precisely the world now taking shape. “America First” is not a slogan, it is a doctrine. And Britain, long accustomed to preferential treatment, is discovering it is no longer exempt.
The warning signs were there. Suez in 1956 exposed Britain’s dependency. But it was dismissed as an aberration, a relic of imperial overreach. Today’s reality is far more structural. The Strait of Hormuz has made it unmistakably clear: Washington will act in its own interests, not as guarantor of a fading Anglo-American compact.
This has profound consequences. The UK’s economic model, an industrial policy implicitly reliant on American backing, coupled with a financial sector thriving on privileged access, now looks dangerously outdated.
The assumption that the US will underwrite British security, liquidity, and global relevance is no longer a strategy. It is a vulnerability.
Meanwhile, the City of London continues to behave as though capital will always flow its way, as though geopolitical alignment is automatic, as though history has paused. It hasn’t. Capital follows power, and power is being redefined in real time.
Britain now faces a stark choice: adapt to a multipolar world or decline within it. That means rethinking industrial policy, rebuilding sovereign capacity, and abandoning the reflexive dependence on Washington’s goodwill.
The uncomfortable truth is this: America has not betrayed Britain. It has simply reprioritized itself.
And Britain, belatedly, must do the same.
No British government has ever imagined that an American president might turn his back on the special relationship between both nations. Until now
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Illustration: Mona Eing & Michael Meissner