EMILY KWONG, HOST:
Before she was NPR's London correspondent, Lauren Frayer was based in Mumbai, covering India.
LAUREN FRAYER, BYLINE: And in India, I was kind of always aware of being a white Westerner in a country with an Anglo-colonial past. So when I turned to, like, preparing for an assignment to cover the U.K., I had absorbed a view of the U.K. through Indian eyes, through the eyes of the colonized.
KWONG: Oh, interesting. Right.
FRAYER: And yeah. Like, I think arriving in London, I felt like I was, in some ways, going into the dark heart, the root of empire.
KWONG: And 2023 was an ineresting year in the U.K. The British prime minster of the time, Rishi Sunak, is of Indian descent, and the Scottish leader, Humza Yousaf, of Pakistani descent.
FRAYER: When the British Empire gave up colonial India in 1947, it partitionied...
KWONG: Yes.
FRAYER: ...Colonial India into India and Pakistan.
KWONG: Right.
FRAYER: So when I arrived here, there was a push for Scottish independence, and people used to joke, like, it would be Brits of Indian and Pakistani descent partitioning the United Kingdom if Scotland were to leave.
KWONG: And that's what Lauren thought her new assignment would be, addressing the legacy of the British Empire. And for this week's Reporter's Notebook, I wanted to see how that expectation held up. One of the first stories Lauren covered in London was the coronation of King Charles III and his wife Camilla.
FRAYER: So I arrived in the U.K., like, a week before the coronation, and this was the first story I covered.
KWONG: No pressure.
FRAYER: And I gave myself a - yeah - crash course in royal pomp and pageantry. Like, I had to learn about the orb and the scepter, the 17th century golden ball and a rod that the king holds. It kind of looks like a magic wand. And to bridge my old beat and new beat, I brought some reporting from India with me about the Koh-i-Noor diamond. This diamond, over the centuries, passed through Mughal, Persian, Afghan, Punjabi Sikh empires before it was gifted - read plundered - from a Punjabi child prince to Queen Victoria. And when I arrived here, I went to see it on display in the Crown Jewels in the Tower of London.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Which was recently...
FRAYER: So, I'm on, like, a conveyor belt, people-mover that you have to stand on as you whiz past the crown jewels - pearls, diamonds, crosses, rubies, emeralds. And I think that's the Koh-i-Noor. Yes. And it's just sparkling. It's amazing. It's like the size of a walnut.
And I joined South Asian tourists shuffling past this diamond whispering, that's ours.
KWONG: Wow.
FRAYER: Like, even the Taliban lays claim to this diamond. And it just - it's sort of a symbol of, like, anti-colonial anger. And at that coronation, Queen Camilla did not wear it.
KWONG: Right. She wore a different crown. Different diamonds.
FRAYER: It was just too sensitive to bring out. Yeah.
KWONG: It's been now almost three years since you landed in London and began this work. And your beat is - it's different than you expected, but it seems like it's changed rapidly in the last year. I mean, when did you realize just the extent of how things were changing for you?
FRAYER: I probably should have realized it earlier, but just in recent months, I mean, with Trump's reelection. So the U.K. is sort of halfway geographically, culturally, politically between U.S. and Europe - sort of in the middle of the Atlantic, politically. And in 2020, Brexit happened. The U.K. followed through on a public decision to leave the European Union and, at that point, sort of put all of its eggs in the other basket, its relationship with the United States. They call it...
KWONG: Yeah.
FRAYER: ...The special relationship. And now, with what many see as sort of erratic policies of the Trump administration, the U.K. is left in the lurch a little bit.
KWONG: So how have you pivoted to adjust to this new reality where we're seeing real tension between the U.S. and these longstanding European partners?
FRAYER: So NPR's International Desk launched this series called Changing World Order. And in one of our podcast episodes for that, I spoke with my colleague Eyder Peralta in Mexico about what this change means for everybody.
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EYDER PERALTA: I'll be the cynic. Maybe we'll look back on it as a return to what the world wants to be, which is a return to a time where might makes right, where we're sheer power and violent.
KWONG: Does this feel like a step back to the past?
FRAYER: Some of my sources say this is a step back to sort of 19th century style imperial diplomacy - you know, muscular power, great power competition. British Empire was on top of that centuries ago. Like, it's a midsize country now, and it's...
KWONG: Yeah.
FRAYER: ...Facing that.
KWONG: Lauren, another big story you covered this year was President Trump's state visit to the U.K. Remind us how that went and what it was like to report on Trump and Prime Minister Keir Starmer. I understand at least publicly, he's very warm towards Trump. He'll embrace him.
FRAYER: Starmer kind of practices what some people call appeasement with Trump. They talk on the phone a ton. Trump came to the U.K. twice last summer in September. Starmer and Trump hung out at a Trump golf resort in Scotland. Starmer, like, hugs him. They smile. He tries not to contradict him. Even though he looks, like, pretty uncomfortable sometimes standing next to Trump, his wife even more so in that Scotland visit.
KWONG: Outside the halls of power, when you speak to people, how do they see this moment and the changing world order?
FRAYER: People are scared. You know, this is a moment of real uncertainty. Former officials, I found, can often be sort of more candid on the record. I spoke recently with George Robertson. He's a former secretary general of NATO. He's known here as Lord Robertson. He's in the House of Lords. He's a former U.K. secretary of state for defense. And we talked about this sort of return to 19th century great power competition.
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GEORGE ROBERTSON: And that was a wild world, where disputes between nations were usually resolved by war and by conflict rather than through deliberation and negotiation. So we need to somehow make sure that President Xi, President Kim Jong-Un, the Ayatollahs in Iran and President Donald J. Trump recognize that multilateralism is in the interests of all of us and that the alternative is a return to open warfare and a Wild West of international relations.
FRAYER: Notice the figures he's comparing...
KWONG: Yeah.
FRAYER: ...Trump to.
KWONG: Wow.
FRAYER: Like, that's not something you would get from Starmer at all.
KWONG: Yeah. Right. And how pointed it is. What about other everyday people whose views don't make the news?
FRAYER: I mean, Trump is not admired here. When he visited in his first term, Londoners hoisted a huge orange baby Trump blimp over the city. Even those on the right here, not many are Trump fans. We are seeing surging support for the far-right anti-immigrant party here. It's called Reform U.K. But even its leader, Nigel Farage, is seen as being tainted by his friendship with Trump. He might get elected, but it won't be because of his friendship with Trump. It would be despite that.
But, you know, this year marks 250 years since the U.S. Declaration of Independence. And I'm going to be reporting this year on how Brits see that sort of legendary divorce, right? Like, I mean, some see it as the first chink in the armor of the British Empire.
KWONG: It all comes back to empire.
FRAYER: Maybe I'm going to get to cover that after all.
KWONG: I can't wait to hear that. So what unanswered questions are still driving your reporting?
FRAYER: I mean, will there be a divorce in the special relationship in U.S.-U.K. ties? Will leaders here, like, sort of bide their time until, you know, the end of Trump's term and then hope that, like, the world rights itself, hope relations go back to what they were? Is the damage already done? Will Europe be able to defend itself?
You know, the U.K. is reevaluating its role in the world. Part of that, again, is empire. It's coming to terms with the inequities of the past. Will the royals apologize for profiting off the slave trade for centuries? Will the royals apologize for Epstein? Will the United Kingdom stay united? We thought it was going to be Scottish independence that was voted down, but increasingly, it looks like Irish reunification may be an - a not if, but a when.
And I've often thought that the U.K. is a little bit of a roadmap or an example for America. Like, the U.K. was the richest, most powerful, you know, biggest military in the world when it had an empire. Now it's just a midsize country. And yet it, like, downsized and managed to retain its democracy. And I think that offers lessons for other big behemoths that might be seeing their role in the world diminish.
KWONG: Lauren Frayer, international correspondent for NPR, thank you so much for coming on Reporter's Notebook.
FRAYER: Thanks for having me, Emily.
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