Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has vowed to cut all ties with the USA if he becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
Speaking on ITV’s Peston on Sunday show, Corbyn suggested the value of Britain’s ‘special relationship’ with the USA was now worthless, and said that Washington is no longer the UK’s ‘most important ally.’
Rt.com reports: Asked Sunday whether the relationship with the US was Britain’s most important, Corbyn said: “No. I think there are many important relationships.”
BYPASS THE CENSORS
Sign up to get unfiltered news delivered straight to your inbox.
You can unsubscribe any time. By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use
The others include China, India, the EU and international organizations, such as the UN, Corbyn told ITV’s Peston on Sunday show.
“I’m not sure that anyone has succeeded in defining the special relationship,” Corbyn went on, saying he was once told by a former prime minister “if they specified what the special relationship was, it wouldn’t be a special relationship.” Still, he admitted Washington is “obviously culturally and economically significant and important.”
.@UKLabour leader @jeremycorbyn clearly is not impressed with @BorisJohnson's accusation that he's damaged the special relationship by criticising @realDonaldTrump. #Peston pic.twitter.com/ubR2XdJmoK
— Peston (@itvpeston) January 14, 2018
Corbyn’s remarks followed President Donald Trump’s decision to call off his planned UK trip for the opening of the new US embassy in London. The US leader tweeted the announcement, blaming his predecessor Barack Obama for making a “bad deal” on the embassy’s relocation site.
The news, however, didn’t disappoint the Labour leader, who said he was “not surprised.” Given Trump’s latest “comments about other countries, particularly in Africa,” the US leader wouldn’t have received the warmest of welcomes and “reaction against him would be huge,” Corbyn said. Apart from “his endless offensive remarks about women, about minorities and about different faiths,” Corbyn said the “biggest disappointment of Donald Trump” was “his failure to support international institutions like the United Nations and like UNESCO.”
Still, the US president has got to come to the UK at “some point,” Corbyn noted.
.@JeremyCorbyn tells @Peston he is not surprised that @realDonaldTrump cancelled his trip to the UK pic.twitter.com/8sndJ6yGN5
— Peston (@itvpeston) January 14, 2018
The cancelled presidential visit is just the latest in a series of diplomatic hiccoughs that indicate a cooling in the supposed special relationship between the US and UK.
Trump and British Prime Minister Theresa May engaged in a spat towards the end of last year after Trump retweeted videos posted by the deputy leader of far-right group Britain First.
May condemned Trump’s actions, to which he responded: “Don’t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom.”
Prior to this, May scolded the US President for tweeting that the person responsible for a suspected terrorist attack on a London Tube train in September 2017 was “in the sights of Scotland Yard.” The British PM also hit out at Trump’s response to August’s Charlottesville protest, where he stopped short of singling out white supremacists for causing the violence.
