By STEVEN ERLANGER, DEC. 30, 2016

Even the so-called special relationship is subject to limits, it seems.

With a Republican administration under Donald J. Trump only weeks away, Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain scolded Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday night for his speech criticizing Israel — a public jab that would have been highly unlikely any other time during the Obama administration.

In a statement that echoed Mr. Trump’s fierce criticism of the Obama administration, Mrs. May chided Mr. Kerry for, among other things, describing the Israeli government as the “most right-wing in Israeli history, with an agenda driven by the most extreme elements.”

Mrs. May does “not believe that it is appropriate to attack the composition of the democratically elected government of an ally,” a spokesman for the prime minister said, using the department’s customary anonymity.

Mr. Kerry’s speech was praised by other European nations, including France and Germany. So the British slap — especially after Mrs. May’s government voted last week for a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlement construction — was something of a shock to Washington.

“We are surprised by the U.K. Prime Minister’s office statement,” the State Department said in a statement, noting that Mr. Kerry’s remarks “were in line with the U.K.’s own longstanding policy and its vote at the United Nations.”

But Mrs. May, who leads a Conservative government, has been trying, with mixed success, to make inroads with the incoming Trump administration. A strong political and trading relationship with the United States has become even more important for Britain after its vote this year to leave the European Union.

Ian Black, a visiting senior fellow at the Middle East Center of the London School of Economics, wrote on Twitter that Mrs. May’s remarks were an “alarming early sign of ‘Trump effect’ on fawning Brits desperate to stay ‘special’ in Brexit era.”

So far, there have been some notable hiccups. The British government was vocally unhappy that the first British politician to meet with Mr. Trump after his election victory was not Mrs. May. Instead, it was one of her rivals, Nigel Farage, the former leader of the anti-Europe, anti-immigration U.K. Independence Party. The visit was even memorialized in a photograph of Mr. Farage and Mr. Trump standing in front of gilded doors at Trump Tower in Manhattan.

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Mrs. May’s criticism of Mr. Kerry represented an extraordinary public rebuke, even if President Obama is about to exit the scene. But it also offered her a chance to establish common ground with the new American administration.

Mr. Trump, a firm defender of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, has publicly disparaged the Obama administration for abstaining — rather than using its veto — last week in the Security Council vote on Israeli settlements.

The president-elect was also critical of Mr. Kerry’s end-of-term speech, which defended the two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and called for an end to Israeli settlement activity that, he said, undermines that possibility.

The British government has been working with Trump aides on an early visit to the White House by Mrs. May, to show the continuing strength of British-American ties.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/30/world/...&pgtype=article