The US-UK “special relationship” is usually dismissed as a figment of British imagination. The joke goes that the relationship is so “special” that only the British know it exists.
In fact, that’s wrong. Leaders in both countries do treat the relationship as special. However, Maga leaders conduct that relationship not with the actual UK but with an imagined version of a long-lost Britain. That means they are forever disappointed by the country’s present incarnation. Meanwhile, British leaders force themselves into contortions of America-pleasing.
After losing the empire, the UK eventually found a role as the US’s wingman. The policy (to paraphrase Dutch comedian Arjen Lubach) was “America First, Britain Second”. That instinct helped prompt some of the worst British political errors. In 2003, Tony Blair took the country into America’s war in Iraq. Then Brexit was driven partly by the fantasy on the British right that a fabulous American trade deal would make up for losing the European single market. (That fantasy ended in self-parody, with the UK signing a “trade deal” with the state of South Carolina.)