It is the great good fortune of Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand to be united by a common language, and a misfortune of even greater magnitude that they share that language with the United States.
America is a very different country to the four Commonwealth realms sometimes brigaded together under the ugly acronym ‘Canzuk’. It has a different constitution, a different culture and a very different history. Where for many years the four were partners (if hardly equal partners) in the common project of the Empire, the United States was, from its foundation, a determined and eventually successful enemy of the same.
For Conservatives who tend to dream of one united Anglosphere – the ‘English-Speaking Peoples’ of Churchill’s great history – it can sometimes be uncomfortable to recognise that America is the problem child in the family. However, the advent of Donald Trump in the White House should serve as a powerful reminder not only that our interests are not always aligned but that America First can often mean Anglo Conservatives are the big losers.
America only slowly, and reluctantly, shouldered its global responsibilities as leader of the Anglosphere. And even then its underlying strategic position – scepticism of the old Empire – never wavered. Entering the second world war scarcely less tardily than the first, its support for Britain entailed draining our foreign currency and gold reserves before letting us fight the war on credit, with the debt called in the day hostilities ceased.
J.D. Vance may well now rue that President Eisenhower finally pulled the rug out from beneath the feet of European strategic autonomy during the Suez crisis.
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