Sir Winston Churchill’s grandson has accused Donald Trump’s team of despising Europe after a furious row which saw vice-president JD Vance criticised for disrespecting Britain’s war dead.
Conservative peer Sir Nicholas Soames, 77, told the House of Lords that the US administration "despise Europe really".
He also predicted that in future the “special relationship” between the UK and the US would not be “what it was”.
“I don’t think they want it to be,” Lord Soames told the international relations and defence committee on Wednesday.
Donald Trump has paid tribute to Churchill, reinstating the bust of the former prime minister in the Oval Office as one of his first acts in power upon his return to the presidential office in January.
Lord Soames’s comments come after Mr Vance faced widespread condemnation for appearing to describe the UK as “some random country that hasn’t fought a war in 30 or 40 years”.
He was accused of erasing the experiences of Britons who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, in what was his latest tirade against the USA’s European allies.
Appearing in front of the same committee, former ambassador to Washington Sir David Manning warned that the US could abandon its allies in a way that was “inconceivable six weeks ago” before President Trump entered the White House.
He also warned that the UK faced a question over whether it could “trust” the US with intelligence, just hours before it emerged that the United States had cut off intelligence-sharing with Kyiv in a move that could seriously hamper the Ukrainian military's ability to target Russian forces.
Issuing his warning, Sir David said there were people in the Trump administration “who seem to be looking for ways of appeasing Russia... [which is] a problem on the intelligence front”.
The UK's most recent former ambassador to the US, Dame Karen Pierce, said the US was not sentimental about the “special relationship”.
"I think there is a special relationship, but what there isn't is a standard definition of what that might be," Dame Pierce told the committee. "I think it is in America's interests. They're not sentimental about it. I think we fool ourselves if we think they are sentimental," she said.
Dame Karen, who was the UK's top diplomat in Washington from 2020 until February when she handed over to Peter Mandelson, added that security and defence were the "bedrock" of the relationship.
She said: "We are America's truly global ally. We are both reliable and capable, and we have what we would call global reach. And a day one, night one ally. We're ready to go and we stand shoulder to shoulder with America in a whole range of ventures."
Some 636 British troops died fighting alongside the US in Iraq and Afghanistan, and on Tuesday a former soldier and now Lib Dem MP who served in Iraq said Mr Vance had made “a sinister attempt to deny that reality”.
Liberal Democrat defence spokesperson Helen Maguire, a former captain in the Royal Military Police who served in Iraq, said: “JD Vance is erasing from history the hundreds of British troops who gave their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Sir Keir Starmer also hit back at the remarks made by the US vice-president, saying that he was “full of admiration” for the “courage and bravery” of British troops who had fought alongside the US, many of whom had been killed in action.
