THE SO-CALLED special relationship between Britain and the US is “collapsing,” peace campaigners claimed at CND’s conference in Leeds.

Marking the end of the New Start nuclear treaty between the US and Russia, which expired on Thursday, campaigners, locals and politicians met to discuss the changing nature of world politics since Donald Trump was elected to the White House last year.  

Leeds East MP Richard Burgon called for Britain to stop “assisting” and “providing political cover for the United States,” saying its foreign policy should “reflect this changing world.”

“The so-called special relationship won’t protect us,” he said. “Our role in the world, of being, by and large, the junior partner to the United States is a degrading one. We can forge a better path.

“The old way of doing things is collapsing. The special relationship is collapsing.”

He asked why the British government had not clearly hit back at Trump following his military operation in Venezuela at the start of the year.

Mr Burgon also mentioned renewed pressures on Cuba, which is facing severe oil shortages as a result of the US blockade, and Trump’s so-called Board of Peace plans for Gaza.

He said: “What other country on Earth would get away without clear condemnation from the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom?

“You look at the military interventions our country has supported, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Libya – those were all a disaster.”

He worried that Britain’s promises for increased military spending at the request of the US “could have been spent on the health service, could have been spent on tackling the cost-of-living crisis.”

CND’s general secretary Sophie Bolt agreed, describing “a real flux in terms of global alliances,” mentioning threats to Britain and to European allies over Trump’s ambitions in Greenland.

“US intentions are no longer couched in terms of concerns around democracy and human rights,” she said. “The gloves are off.

“We’ve seen the emergence of a real challenge to the special relationship.”

She called on peace activists to leverage this challenge, and continue to organise with trade unions and climate activists to break “Britain’s military and nuclear subordination to the US.”