Two separate breaks in the intelligence relationship, five months apart.
On November 11, 2025, CNN reported that Britain had stopped giving the United States intelligence on suspected drug-running boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. For years the UK, which bases intelligence assets in its Caribbean territories, had helped locate those vessels so the Coast Guard could stop them, board them and detain the crews. After the US began destroying the boats and killing the people aboard in September 2025, British officials concluded the strikes were unlawful and that passing targeting data would make them complicit. More than a dozen strikes had killed 76 people by that point. NBC News confirmed the suspension independently. Colombia's president ordered his own security forces to do the same the following day.
On April 1, 2026, The i Paper reported that the withholding had widened beyond the Caribbean. Whitehall officials told the paper they no longer trusted their closest ally with British secrets. The reasons given were Trump's threats against Greenland, his stated ambition to interfere in European politics, his public anger at Britain's refusal to join the war on Iran, and his personal attacks on Keir Starmer, whom he had called “no Churchill.”
The Netherlands moved earlier and for different reasons. In October 2025 the directors of the Dutch AIVD and MIVD said publicly they had begun withholding material from Washington, weighing each case individually out of concern about the politicisation of American intelligence, mainly regarding Russia.
One caveat belongs on the record: the UK suspension is sourced to anonymous officials. The British government has never confirmed it publicly, and every later account traces back to the original CNN and NBC reporting.