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America has changed beyond all recognition, and I do think it is fair to wonder whether UK policy towards the United States is changing rapidly enough
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Let's review the balance sheet. After not even 100 days of Trump's second term
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a global trade war that has brought America's economic recovery to a crashing halt
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seen stock markets around the world crater, The value of millions of Americans' retirement accounts evaporate
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and economists all over the world now warning of a likely American recession
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People being seized off the streets by masked agents of the American government
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put on planes without any due legal process and being flown, if they're lucky
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back to their country of origin. If they're not so lucky, being deposited in America's El Salvadorian Gulag
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a terrorist detention centre in San Salvador, paid for by the US government
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now incarcerating hundreds of people whose identities we do not even know and who were removed from the country in defiance of court orders
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A crackdown on freedom of the press, you can see that daily at the White House, where a growing number of far-right propaganda outlets
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are given front row seats for the president's daily activities and are being encouraged to lob softball questions at him
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Pressure being brought to bear on America's universities with Harvard last week
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warned that its staff, students and administrators would have to go through a viewpoint audit
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if the university wanted to continue receiving more than $2 billion in federal funds
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The White House now says the letter that Harvard called a threat to free speech
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was sent by mistake, and yet other universities have already caved in to some of Trump's very similar demands
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Several white-collar law firms have also bent the knee rather than see the president make good on his threat
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to shred valuable federal contracts with them European governments have been told time and again that they need to spend more money on their own defence so that America can decouple from the 80
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transatlantic alliance. Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky has been publicly dressed down in the
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White House. By contrast, Russia's Vladimir Putin has been romanced by President Trump
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in a bid to draw him into peace talks over the war that the Russian leader started
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As recently as last week, of course, Donald Trump accused Zelensky of starting the war
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and said Europe's most courageous leader since Winston Churchill had not done a good job in office
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How can we continue to pretend that America is an ally, that there is any shared outlook that somehow binds Sir Keir Starmer in No. 10
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and Donald Trump in the White House together? And as for that state visit, the ultimate British blandishment
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delivered by the Prime Minister in the Oval Office, The American president says it going to take place in September though there is still no confirmation of that by Buckingham Palace or number 10 And September seems to me to be a very long way off No one in January imagined the tsunami of change that Trump has already implemented his steam
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rollering of both Congress and the courts, the two constitutionally co-equal branches of government
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alongside the presidency. What will America look like by September? That's an enormous hostage to
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fortune for that second state visit, a visit that I know many of you do not think should be taking
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place. So tell me how the last few weeks have impacted your view of America. Is it still the
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country you dream of visiting this summer? Or have you cancelled a trip or moved one further down your
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bucket list? Is it still the nation of boundless possibilities, the shining city on the hill that
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Ronald Reagan used to describe? Is it still the indispensable nation? Or is it time for us to
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learn to cut the apron strings with the United States on the basis that not even the most
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optimistic scenario leaves Washington in anything other than no man's land for decades to come
