By Harold Wilson's time in the 60s, even despite the Vietnam War, friends of the special relationship were fortunate: Wilson's Foreign Secretaries for most of his tenure were Labour conservatives George Brown and Michael Stewart, whose pro-American sympathies were accepted by an emollient "beer and sandwiches" Premier anxious to maintain peace in a fractious government.
Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg - whose MPs are mostly pro-European - has warned against using the current crisis to fundamentally redraw the UK's relationship with Europe.