Pat McFadden MP: Trump should heed The Queen's wise words over UK-US bond

The friendship between America and Britain is much bigger than one man.

The gathering of world leaders in Portsmouth today to mark the 75th anniversary of D Day is a timely reminder that the relationship between the UK and the USA is much bigger and deeper than one man.

For on June 6, 1944, began the push that would sweep Hitler’s armies back from the French coast all the way to Berlin and save Europe from fascism.

Whilst President Trump’s visit has attracted protests over his views on everything from race to climate change, it is important to look beyond the bombastic tweets and make a distinction between his views and the country he represents.

After all, this is a distinction millions of American citizens make on a daily basis.

The UK’s alliance with the USA has been one of the vital pillars of our foreign and defence policy for decades.

The thousands of American soldiers buried in European war graves are testament to the sacrifices made by the United States in fighting alongside the UK, Canada and our allies for the freedom of Europe.

And as Her Majesty the Queen reminded her guest at the state banquet the other night, our joint work carried on into the post war architecture of collective international organisations.

In pointed remarks sparkling with historic awareness, she said: "After the shared sacrifices of the Second World War, Britain and the United States worked with other allies to build an assembly of international institutions, to ensure that the horrors of conflict would never be repeated.

"While the world has changed, we are forever mindful of the original purpose of these structures: nations working together to safeguard a hard won peace.”

President Trump would do well to heed her Majesty’s wise words.

Her warning against the threat to collective international institutions could not have been better directed or come at a more appropriate time.

The retreat to nationalism and the transactional politics of “the deal” pose a careless and potentially dangerous threat to the work done by the allies to secure post war peace.

Whilst President Trump may have a point when he asks fellow members of NATO to shoulder their share of defence spending, valuing the company of tyrants over our allies and disdain for multilateral institutions of collective defence and economic security will only to be welcomed by our two countries’ enemies.

That lesson was well understood by the leaderships of both the UK and the United States in the years after the war.

The Labour Government under Clement Attlee worked alongside President Harry Truman to establish NATO as a system of collective defence.

And the UK and other European countries received billions of dollars in aid from the American Marshall Plan which helped stop the collapse of democracy and stem the threat of communism in the wake of the war.

In these strident times it would bforgiveablele to conclude that the post war lesson had been forgotten forever and that we are condemned to an age of nationalist strongmen.

But it need not be so.

President Trump will not be there forever and while he is there it is important to speak up for what we value.

So as we commemorate the value of our alliance 75 years on from D Day, the mature response to this week’s visit should be to remember that the relationship between the UK and the USA – and the collective institutions stemming from it – have endured beyond all personalities in the past 80 years.

Those institutions and more importantly the values that underpin them can also endure in the future, provided we have the courage to resist the siren calls of nationalist grievance and remember the lesson from our post war leaders that like-minded countries are much stronger when they work together.