Britain has been paying a high price for Uncle Sam's craziness. It's time to turn to Europe

In his final column, the Observer's foreign affairs commentator warns that Trump's America spells trouble for its allies, but it was ever thus

- Simon Tisdall

America spells trouble for Britain. That's undoubtedly true in the age of Trump - but maybe it's always been so. The White House's undisguised contempt for loyal allies in the UK and Europe necessitates a robust reciprocal rethink. How healthy and desirable - is this partnership? Has it caused more problems than it's worth?

Those, myself included, who throughout their professional lives have taken close transatlantic ties for granted, face some awkward questions. Is the US-UK "special relationship" an embarrassment, even a strategic liability? Today's America is evidently not a trustworthy, disinterested friend. Was it ever?

As I write my last foreign affairs commentary for the Observer, I look back over nearly 50 years and wonder, firstly, at the false narrative, not confined to Donald Trump, that American altruism is exploited by "freeloading" European Nato allies. What tosh! US troops and missiles are based here primarily to defend the US. Since 1945, Washington has viewed Europe as its first line of defence against Russia. Germany was the US's preferred cold war battlefield, Britain its airfield. Perish the thought that Americans might actually fight on their own soil (except against each other). US wars are typically waged in faraway places. That's why the 1962 Cuba missile crisis came as such a shock.

The trouble with America began at conception. The "war of independence" that started as a middle-class taxpayers' revolt was a stab in the back for Europe's struggle against Napoleon's tyranny - the Vladimir Putin of his time. American resistance to British efforts to suppress the global slave trade perpetuated another evil.