More than two decades after Hugh Grant’s fictional Prime Minister finally stood up to an overbearing American President, Britain is still waiting for its real-life equivalent. Andy Burnham’s first meeting with Donald Trump certainly wasn’t it, but perhaps our obsession with getting one says more about Britain than it does about America.
There is a scene in Love Actually that has probably done more to shape the British imagination, of their “special relationship” with the States, than arguably most diplomatic summits. Hugh Grant’s fictional Prime Minister stands alongside Billy Bob Thornton’s American President and, after spending much of his visit being pushed around, finally decides he has had enough. Informing him that although Britain may be smaller than America, that does not mean it should simply do as it is told. The film was released in 2003, at a time when Tony Blair’s close relationship with George W. Bush–particularly over the invasion of Iraq–had made Britain’s relationship with Washington a source of major political controversy.
Twenty-three years later, another Labour Prime Minister sat beside another American President. Anyone anticipating the sequel was disappointed. Andy Burnham’s first face-to-face meeting with Donald Trump on Tuesday was remarkably civil. Trump praised the new Prime Minister as a “natural businessman” and claimed relations with Britain had improved since Keir Starmer left office. Burnham later said the two leaders had established a “good connection”. There were disagreements underneath the smiles. Trump again attacked Britain’s Chagos Islands agreement. Burnham defended British positions where the two governments diverged, while Downing Street said he made clear that Britain would “stand firm” over the Falkland Islands. Ukraine, Iran, migration, trade and the strategically important Diego Garcia military base were all discussed. But there was no showdown. No furious Prime Minister. No triumphant press conference. No Hugh Grant moment. In diplomatic terms, it was all pretty normal.
What made the meeting especially interesting was the man sitting in the British chair. When Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol on the 6th of January 2021, Burnham stated that “any UK politician who gave Trump the time of day should be ashamed”. He has since criticised, what he sees as the increasingly poisonous nature of American politics, and argued that Trump has contributed to instability internationally. Now, asked whether he personally trusted Trump, Prime Minister Burnham simply answered: “Yes.” It is quite a transformation, but it can perhaps tells us something about what happens when British politicians cross the threshold of Number 10.
The question is not really why no British Prime Minister has ever disagreed with an American President. They have. British governments have repeatedly found themselves at odds with Washington on individual foreign-policy questions. What they rarely do is deliberately turn those disagreements into some kind of theatrical public rupture. And that is where Love Actually starts to become a rather poor guide to foreign policy. The relationship between Britain and America does not simply exist because two leaders get along. It is deep rooted in the workings of the British state. The two countries are members of the Five Eyes intelligence network. Their nuclear relationship stretches back more than six decades and is underpinned by the UK-US Mutual Defence Agreement. They cooperate through NATO and AUKUS, while their armed forces and intelligence agencies work closely together. The House of Commons Library describes defence, intelligence, and nuclear cooperation as central parts of the bilateral relationship.
Then comes the concern of money. In 2025, the United States was Britain’s largest individual trading partner. Trade between the two countries was worth about £332 billion, representing 17.5 per cent of total UK trade. It was also Britain’s largest export market, receiving more than a fifth of UK exports. While it does not mean Britain cannot say no to Washington–it obviously can, it does mean that standing up to an American President has consequences extending further than the applause in the room. Tony Blair knew this better than most. Two years after Love Actually was released, Blair referenced the film during his 2005 Labour conference speech. He acknowledged that part of Britain wanted him to “do a Hugh Grant” and refuse to bend for Washington, before arguing that real governments have to think about what happens after the applause. It remains a decent description of the problem.
A film can end after the speech, whilst a government has to wake up the next morning and deal with the consequences. There are intelligence agreements to manage, wars to negotiate over, businesses relying on American markets, military operations involving both countries, and crises where Washington simply has far more resources than London does. None of that means Britain should agree with the United States on everything. Nor does being allies mean British governments should avoid criticising American policy. However it likely helps explain why the scene, generations of British viewers seem to want, has proved so difficult to reproduce.
There may also be another reason. It could just be that Britain’s obsession with its Love Actually moment has never really been about America at all. Maybe it is about us. There is something distinctly post-imperial about the fantasy. For centuries, Britain sat at the centre of an empire stretching across enormous parts of the world. At its nineteenth-century height, decisions made in London affected hundreds of millions of people thousands of miles away. That world disappeared remarkably quickly. Britain today is still an unusually influential country. It possesses nuclear weapons. It is a permanent member of the UN Security Council, a member of the G7 and NATO, one of the world’s largest economies and maintains diplomatic and military influence far beyond what its population alone might suggest. But it is not a superpower.
And there is a basic fact about the modern Anglo-American relationship that Britain has never seemed entirely comfortable admitting: America is simply much more powerful than we are. The two countries are allies, but they are not equals in material power. The United States possesses an economy, military, and geopolitical reach vastly larger than Britain’s. America became the power capable of shaping the international system in a way Britain had once imagined itself doing. That transition was always going to create something of an identity problem. Research published through the University of Oxford, has found that attitudes towards the British Empire still form a distinct dimension of British public opinion, with imperial nostalgia strongly associated with contemporary political preferences. Britain may have surrendered most of its empire generations ago, but arguments about what the country was, and what it thinks it should still be, never really disappeared.
Perhaps that helps explain why meetings between British Prime Ministers and American Presidents can feel so weirdly important. We examine whether our Prime Minister looks submissive or strong. We notice who seems to dominate the room. We complain when Washington appears to dictate terms. And we wait for somebody in Downing Street to say “no” loud enough that Britain might, just briefly, feel like the more powerful country again. Love Actually gives us the perfect version of that fantasy. For a few cinematic minutes, the imbalance disappears. The British Prime Minister dominates the room. America is put back in its place. Britain stands independently and proudly before the world.
Real geopolitics has been a lot less accommodating. Britain has spent the post-war period adjusting from imperial superpower to something harder to define: still a major diplomatic, economic and cultural player, but no longer capable of shaping the international order by itself. Even the term “middle power” does not quite fit Britain neatly. Its nuclear arsenal and permanent Security Council seat give it privileges most countries simply do not possess. Yet its ability to act independently is far more limited than the Britain celebrated in its own national mythology. That gap between the Britain remembered, and the Britain that actually exists, may be where some of the longing for a Love Actually moment comes from. It offers reassurance. That Britain still matters as much as we remember it mattering. That the special relationship really is a relationship between equals. That geopolitical decline might somehow be reversed by one sufficiently magnificent speech.
Burnham provided none of that on Tuesday. Instead, the man who once suggested British politicians should be ashamed for giving Trump the time of day shook his hand, talked trade and security, acknowledged their disagreements and described their new relationship as a “good connection”. You can regard that as pragmatism or as folding to Trump. Future disagreements between the two governments may test the relationship considerably more seriously than one carefully choreographed meeting at the United Nations. But perhaps the more interesting question is not why Burnham failed to produce Britain’s Love Actually moment. It is why, twenty-three years later, Britain still seems to crave one. Because maybe we were never really waiting for a British Prime Minister to tell an American President to f*** off. Maybe we were waiting for somebody to tell us that Britain is still the country it used to be.
