Ruth Cadbury is hard at work campaigning for Kamala Harris ahead of November’s presidential election. It’s what you might expect from a Democrat politician, except that Cadbury is British, a Labour MP, and New Hampshire falls a little outside the boundaries of her Brentford and Isleworth constituency. She’s not the only British politico heading Stateside to drum up support for the Democrats. Former Tory cabinet minister Robert Buckland has been knocking doors for Harris in Massachusetts and Connecticut, while Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton is off to pound lawn signs for Harris in Pennsylvania.
Critics point out that Cadbury and Cole-Hamilton are parliamentarians and say they ought properly to be at work on their constituents’ behalf. Much the same was said about Nigel Farage when he travelled to the United States following the first assassination attempt on Donald Trump. Of course, vanishingly few of those scolding Cadbury and Cole-Hamilton also scolded Farage and vice versa. It all comes down to how you conjugate the verb ‘to electioneer abroad’: I fight to save democracy, you interfere in other countries’ affairs, Farage is a Russian agent. One of the joys of observing hyper-partisan behaviour from the sidelines is listening as one gimlet-eyed tribalist after another breathlessly explains why it’s okay when their side does it, but An Affront To Democracy when the other lot do. They say politics is showbiz for ugly people but it’s really team sports for nerds.
All this transatlantic electoral travel grinds the wonky gnashers of British traditionalists. They long ago lost the war against philo-Americanism, which reigns in most aspects of our lives, institutions and attitudes, even if events (most recently, the Iraq war) occasionally give rise to spurts of anti-Americanism. But they object to seeing British politicians of left and right so thoroughly under the sway of West Wingism. I don’t just mean the dread suspicion that many of our MPs have had the ‘I’m such a CJ’, ‘I’m more of a Toby’ conversation at some point, though that is pretty horrifying. Rather it is the open embrace by British politicians of that sentimental, Sorkinised idealism in which America is the flawed-but-good indispensable nation, ever-perfecting its Union at home while spreading freedom, democracy and cheeseburgers abroad. To believe in isms is bad enough; to believe in the Hollywood remake of isms is as un-British as it gets.
There is a way to end this tension that pulls us towards America in our politics, culture, habits and consumer choices while making us resent the loss of the distinctive politics, culture, habits and consumer choices that were once our own. The answer, to borrow a fashionable Americanism, is to lean into it. Stop being wannabe Americans and become actual Americans by applying to become a US state, while reasserting our identity and idiosyncrasies in much the same way that states like Texas and New York do.
I know it sounds mad, but hear me out. What country would make a better fit as a US state than the UK? Half their towns are named after our towns. We have a common history, share a legal tradition, and have already imported their pop culture, identity politics and mangled English. We fight in the same wars, are owned by the same corporations, and sit beside each other at the same international bodies. We have broadly similar attitudes to democracy. We share the same aversion to enforcing our borders. We both hate the French. Best of all, they retain so much of their Anglo heritage that they still sing our national anthem, albeit with the lyrics changed.
They say politics is showbiz for ugly people but it’s really team sports for nerds
Becoming part of the United States would be the making of modern Britain. We’d be the largest state by population, outnumbering Californians by 30 million, which would give us far and away the most electoral college votes in presidential elections and more members of congress than any other state. Given the centre ground of British politics in economic and social matters, we’d likely be a reliably blue state, but our size would make us the most important state in every presidential and midterm election. The two main parties would be falling over themselves to line our pockets with federal dollars; almost anything we asked for would be guaranteed because to refuse us would be to hand the next election to the other party.
It would bring prosperity to the UK, taking our $51,000 per capita GDP closer to America’s $85,000. Opponents of statehood would point to the loss of the NHS or the sudden availability of firearms across the UK, but there is nothing to stop a US state enacting single-payer healthcare – it has been proposed in a number of blue states – and while the Supreme Court says the Second Amendment grants an individual right to keep and bear arms, ask any gun owner in New York or California and they’ll tell you how thoroughly a state can belabour that right without legal consequence. We’d have to get used to misspelling the word ‘colour’ but we’d fall under the protection of the mightiest military the world has ever known, which isn’t a bad trade off. We could finally stop pretending to like cricket and instead pretend that college basketball is a real sport.
The more difficult sell would be to the Americans. Why should they want us? We’re an economic basket case and, though strategically well-placed as a bridge between North America and Europe, we’re already a reliable military and diplomatic ally. However, we do have the City of London, the world’s number two location on the Global Financial Centres Index, and a tidy stockpile of nuclear weapons, plus Washington would gain some potentially useful little dots on the map like the Falklands, the Caymans, Gibraltar and a couple of military bases in Cyprus. (The Chagos Islands, not so much.)
We have some oil, which a future Republican administration would probably be up for drilling, and heaps of wind power, which the Democrats would be more enthusiastic about. We also have Northern Ireland and what better way for the United States to pursue its keen interest in Irish affairs than by sharing an island and a border. America would gain Scotland, where roughly 96 per cent of them claim to come from, and while as a US state Britain would be a republic, the royal family could be retained for tourism, kitsch marketing and Netflix licensing purposes. Wales would come as part of the package but they manage fine with one Alabama so a second shouldn’t be all that much trouble.
In many ways, the UK would be the ultimate prize for the United States. How many former empires apply to become part of their former colonies? It would be like winning the revolutionary war all over again, and this time we won’t come back thirty years later and burn down the White House. And they’d never have to worry about foreigners coming over to stick their limey noses in presidential elections again. We could stick them in right here at home in Britain, the 51st state of the Union.
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