Now the UK should think twice about sharing intelligence with America

The reality is very clear, writes Dominic Grieve. With the current direction of the USA, we can only face the challenge it poses by working with Europe and other allies who share our values

Listening to the words of President Trump is to enter the world of the surreal. As Friday’s leader in The Independent has identified, it is not just the issue that he seems to have decided to abandon US support for Ukraine and requires it to cut some form of deal or ceasefire with Putin’s Russia, so as to stop the war, but that he has chosen to vilify President Zelensky and Ukraine itself as a sovereign independent state through a series of whopping lies, straight out of Russian propaganda, about the origin of the war, in order to justify his policy.

Equally astonishing is to have to listen to these lies being repeated by US vice-president JD Vance and defence secretary Hegseth. All this before we have to listen to the rants of Mr Musk. It is impossible to escape the conclusion that the leadership of the USA is being turned into the court of the emperor Nero, with a narcissistic and nasty ruler surrounded by sycophants: a disaster for the people of the United States and the free world.

The implications of all this for our national security are at present being tiptoed around. Hope is expressed that the prime minister’s forthcoming visit to the USA might bring a change of direction. President Macron is about to attempt the same. But barring some miracle, it is hard to see how so much damage to Nato unity of purpose, done so rapidly, does not presage a fundamental shift in Trump’s view of US national interest.

Indeed, the signs are now there that he has adopted the persona of a transactional mafia boss, much more interested in forging a deal with an undoubted mafia boss in the shape of Putin than in seeking to promote US interests by sustaining the values of the international rules-based system, which Putin has consistently ignored and violated at every level.

Since the end of the Second World War, the US and the UK have had a special relationship in matters of security and defence which has survived occasional policy differences and greatly benefited both parties, as I know from my time as chair of the intelligence and security committee. We share intelligence with Canada, Australia and New Zealand through the “Five Eyes” in a process so well established that it does not require political direction. It is based on high levels of trust.

With the current direction of the USA, we can only face the challenge it poses by working with our neighbours who share our values (PA Wire)

But it is impossible to see how this can survive a situation where the most powerful participating member has gone rogue and is cosying up to Russia, which is, for us at present, our and our neighbourhood’s most immediate and potentially dangerous adversary, even if we continue to have interests in common in respect of the threat from China and elsewhere.

We are facing our biggest crisis since 1939. We do so with a wholly inadequate defence budget that has led over two decades to the inadequate state of our armed forces. We do so at a time when our economy continues to be adversely impacted by Brexit and when the removal of the UK from European structures remains a significant barrier to the cooperation in defence procurement that is going to be needed very quickly to meet the challenge we are facing from Russia. Ensuring that Ukraine survives as a free, sovereign and independent state is not only some moral imperative, it is also essential to avoid far worse conflict later.

During the First World War, the UK and France were prompted by the anglophone and anglophile businessman Jean Monnet to not only be allies but also break down barriers to joint defence procurement and wider wartime economic cooperation. This is what we are now going to need urgently again at a pan-European level. The reality is very clear. With the current direction of the USA, we can only face the challenge it poses by working with our neighbours who share our values.

Barrister and former politician Dominic Grieve served as shadow home secretary from 2008-09 and attorney general for England and Wales from 2010-2014