When the UK’s newly appointed foreign secretary, Liz Truss, met her US counterpart Antony Blinken for the first time last September, the conversation was far from diplomatic.
According to people briefed on the discussion, Truss questioned the special relationship between the two countries — a concept that has underpinned the US-UK alliance since the phrase was popularised by Britain’s wartime prime minister Winston Churchill in the 1940s.
Truss said she had seen few tangible examples to support the idea that the relationship was particularly unique, one of the people said, citing Britain’s better trade relations with Canada, Japan and Mexico, as well as a dispute over steel tariffs with the US.
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