The interests of the Tory-controlled British government and the Trump administration have never been so aligned. Both Boris Johnson and President Trump have rightly cast Beijing as the antagonist of the coronavirus pandemic, bringing the United Kingdom on board with the United States’s plan to ice out Huawei from each nation’s 5G infrastructures. Thus, the usually chummy populists have little obvious reason to be at odds.

Yet British law enforcement is suddenly refusing to send the U.S. evidence in criminal cases. Explicitly, the U.K.’s Central Authority told the U.S. that the pause is due to a U.K. Supreme Court ruling that British authorities cannot comply with U.S. terrorist cases without assurance that the suspects would not face the death penalty.