The UK – an increasingly unreliable ally

The problems for the UK seem to continue across the board. In the age of the Henry Nowak’s murder, two-tier racially motivated policing, political dysfunction, a Labour party that is falling apart under its weak leader, impact of Brexit, high criminality and so on, what could be done? After all, the UK faces a mix of economic, public-service, demographic, and political challenges. The UK has experienced relatively weak productivity growth since the 2008 financial crisis, impacting British competitiveness, wages, living standards, resulting in lower government revenues. This means stagnant real wages for many workers, low business investment compared with some peer countries and regional economic disparities, especially between parts of London/Southeast England and some former industrial areas. Housing is one of the UK’s most persistent problems with high house prices relative to incomes, expensive rents, particularly in and around London, shortages of new housing in areas where demand is strongest and, similar to the U.S., difficulty for younger people entering the housing market.

The country is also struggling with the National Health Service with long waiting lists for some treatments, staff shortages in certain specialties, growing demand from an aging population and funding pressures and infrastructure needs. Like in many other countries in Europe, affordability is an important matter and many households feel squeezed in areas such as housing costs, energy bills, food prices and slower wage growth for some sectors.

The UK continues to debate its constitutional future and there is a growing difference between the traditional parties the Conservatives and Labour and new more dynamic parties like Reform UK and Restore Britain. This phase of transition will likely have a significant impact in future elections, as seen in recent local elections. Also, there are difficult economic long-term effects of Brexit, issues between relations between the UK government and devolved governments, independence debates in Scotland and even in Wales and governance issues in Northern Ireland.

Immigration remains politically significant and there is a wide divide between immigration-friendly Labour and the other parties. The mass immigration has resulted in difficulties with housing demand, the budget given the increased costs, criminality, border and asylum policies and long-term integration and social cohesion. Somehow, the UK forgot to ask some fundamental immigration questions like what is the cost for immigration, how do immigrants fit into the labor market and what skills do they have? How quickly can housing and infrastructure expand so that rents and housing costs will not increase and how effective are integration policies?

Related to foreign affairs, the UK has intensified its activities and coordination with EU, recently supporting the new Hungarian leader Magyar and continuing supporting Ukraine. The UK recently refused to provide military bases for the U.S. operation in Iran and seems to be an increasingly unreliable ally to the U.S. The countries have increasingly different national interests, the U.S. is a global power, whereas the UK has a diminished global role with limited power and resources. The UK supports policies that benefit British interests but not American ones, which has created disagreements over trade policy, military interventions, climate and regulatory issues. The UK does not only have a weak leader, compared with its global role in the mid-20th century, the UK has a smaller military and less ability to project power independently, which limit the UK’s ability and willingness to contribute at the scale Washington might prefer. Instead of being a stable ally to the U.S., the UK often disagree on various issues such as aspects of the U.S. Middle East policy, trade, approaches to international institutions and relations with allies and rivals.

It seems that it is time for the U.S. to reevaluate the so-called special relationship with the UK in areas such as security, intelligence, tariffs and trade and economic cooperation. The U.S. is increasingly focused on competition with China and may ask whether existing alliances are optimally structured for current challenges. The White House under Trump does not seem to trust the far-left Starmer Labour government and is steadily moving away from the UK. Maybe the U.S. policy will change once the government in the UK will change, but for the time being, it seems to be a reasonable policy as the UK is no longer a strong ally and have increasingly domestic problems to tackle. It seems that the U.S. is wise to change its relationship with the UK.