Re Martin Kettle’s excellent article (After Darroch, Britain risks becoming a vassal of the US, Journal, 11 July), it is shocking what has happened to this fine diplomat – down to the unbelievable unthinking behaviour and loose tongues of the leaker, Donald Trump and Boris Johnson. I question, however, the use of the word “becoming” in the article’s headline.
The UK has been the lapdog of the US for a long time. “RAF” Menwith Hill in beautiful Nidderdale, North Yorkshire, is occupied and controlled by the US visiting forces and their agencies. Three more satellite dishes (radomes) are to be constructed, bringing the total to 37. This base has many questionable roles and was crucial in the disastrous illegal war in Iraq and the dangerous mess that followed in the Middle East. The “special relationship” is so special that they do what they like, whether legal or not, and all our security is put at risk.
Lindis Percy
Co-founder, Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases (CAAB)
Could the Darroch affair be a blessing in disguise? Even when Eisenhower pulled the plug on Suez in 1956, Britain still could not see that the special relationship had been peculiar to the second world war. By continuing to make that relationship the cornerstone of foreign policy, this country failed to face up to its much reduced circumstances and the limits of its power when it ought to have pursued a strategy of adjusting to reality by rebuilding itself within a European framework. Britain, the EU and, I believe, the US would have been the better for it. While remaining an ally of the US, now is the time to begin steadily to erase the word “special” from our relationship with it.
John Smith
Lindfield, West Sussex
Martin Kettle quotes British diplomatic officials as stating that there is no precedent for what Trump has done, in seeking to have Kim Darroch removed from his post as the UK’s ambassador to the US. In fact it is common practice for countries to deny granting consent and also to withdraw consent once granted in regard to the presence of foreign diplomatic officials who are not – or who are no longer – wanted. This has been codified as established practice by the Vienna convention on diplomatic relations (1961).
Historically, the most famous such case was when the pope refused to grant credentials to the ambassador designated by the German empire in 1872.
Seth Barrett Tillman
Maynooth, County Kildare, Ireland
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