Speaker Johnson addresses U.K. Parliament, vowing to calm Trump tensions

Fifty years ago, then House Speaker Carl Albert was invited to Parliament to mark 200 years of American independence. But Johnson will be the first to address lawmakers directly.

“The story of the U.K.-U.S. relationship is one of remarkable evolution, from conflict to forging one of the closest, most productive alliances the world has seen,” Lindsay Hoyle, speaker of the British House of Commons, told Johnson on Tuesday.

But even Farage, one of Trump’s most prominent supporters in Britain, was visibly aghast at the situation. He told Johnson on his TV show that this was “the biggest fracture in our relationship” since the Suez Crisis of 1956, when the U.S. pressured Britain, France and Israel to withdraw after invading Egypt.

“Your here about to speak to parliament — is there nothing that can be done here?” he asked Johnson.

If anything, Trump is only increasing the pressure.

He had previously supported the U.K.’s decision in May last year to sign a 3.4 billion pounds ($4.6 billion) deal to hand back the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. The Indian Ocean nation had argued that it was illegally forced to give away the archipelago to gain independence from Britain.

As part of the deal, the U.K. and U.S. will retain a 99-year lease of the Diego Garcia military base.

Trump slammed this in a Truth Social post as an act of “total weakness.”

The British government defended its decision Tuesday, with a spokesman saying the deal had secured the future of the military base “for generations” and noting that it was supported by Washington and other allies.