When I was a young man, the claim that Britain was in danger of becoming the 51st state was a political slur mainly thrown about by the left, particularly those who objected to the presence of US military bases. But there was some anti-American sentiment on the right, too – Enoch Powell, for instance, had a dislike of America’s hostility to the Empire that dated back to his service in the second world war. I’m even guilty of some anti–American prejudice myself and wrote a memoir in which I tried to convey that my failure to take Manhattan in the mid-1990s was because I wasn’t willing to sell my soul to Mammon.
Well, I take it all back. Having watched Donald Trump’s performance at the joint press conference with the Prime Minister on Monday, I wish he was our leader and not Sir Keir Starmer. On all the key topics the President touched on – immigration, net zero, the awfulness of Sadiq Khan – I am in violent agreement with him. I would now like nothing more than for Britain to be the 51st state.
It’s not just because I’m more closely politically aligned with Trump than Starmer. If Britain was part of the United States, Trump wouldn’t hesitate to start deporting undocumented migrants, as he’s done in the US, where (according to the White House) illegal immigration has fallen by 95 per cent since he became the 47th President. All those tedious legal obligations we have under the European Convention on Human Rights and the Refugee Convention would be swatted aside like so many pesky flies. If the price to pay is renaming the stretch of water between Britain and France the ‘American Channel’, so be it.
When it comes to energy, I can think of no greater boon to the British economy than re-starting oil and gas exploration in the North Sea, lifting the fracking ban and exploiting our mineral rights in the South Atlantic. It’s our insane net-zero policy and our resulting electricity prices that is partly responsible for our GDP per capita being lower than Mississippi’s, the poorest state in the union. Incidentally, average GDP per capita was higher in the UK than the US as recently as 2007. We passed the Climate Change Act the following year, around the same time as our long, ignominious decline began.
Above all, there’s the First Amendment. Oh, how I wish the speech of British citizens enjoyed the same protections as that of Americans. All the fetters on freedom of expression that have sprung up like knotweed since the passing of the Race Relations Act in 1965 – buried in nasty little clauses in the Public Order Act 1986, the Malicious Communications Act 1988, the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, the Communications Act 2003 and the Online Safety Act 2023 – would not survive a First Amendment challenge. The moment we became the 51st state, they would all be placed in what Americans call ‘the circular file’, i.e. the bin.
Mr President, if you are reading this, I want you to know I stand ready to serve
Of course, it won’t ever happen – and I don’t want this to read like a counsel of despair. I still hold out a sliver of hope that a future British government will do its best to implement all of these policies, although stopping the boats, scrapping net zero and restoring free speech would be a good deal easier if we were the 51st state. In the words of Paul Goodman, a Conservative colleague in the House of Lords, if a ministry led by Nigel Farage tried to do any of these things, it ‘would be met on day one by an institutional intifada’. A radical, reforming government might have the intestinal fortitude to stand up to this onslaught, but, like Lord Goodman, I fear it would soon be seen off by the closed ranks of the Establishment, much like Liz Truss’s was.
But I have a solution. We all know Trump to be an ambitious man who will be reluctant to surrender power in 2028. So why shouldn’t he become a British citizen and run against Sir Keir in 2029, either as the newly installed head of Reform UK or as the leader of a new political party? His mother was born in Scotland, so he’s eligible, and unlike in the US, you don’t have to be born in Britain to occupy our highest political office. I imagine the prospect of addressing the House of Commons as our prime minister will appeal to him as an act of sweet revenge after being denied the opportunity to address parliament during his forthcoming state visit.
If anyone can take on the Blob, the Donald can. Kemi Badenoch can be deputy prime minister and Nigel our ambassador in Washington (after being given a hereditary peerage). Mr President, if you’re reading this, I want you to know I stand ready to serve. Let’s make Britain great again.
Comments