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 \u2013 Enoch Powell, for instance, had a dislike of America\u2019s hostility to the Empire that dated back to his service in the second world war. I\u2019m even guilty of some anti\u2013American 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\u2019t willing to sell my soul to Mammon.<\/p>\n
Well, I take it all back. Having watched Donald Trump\u2019s 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 \u2013 immigration, net zero, the awfulness of Sadiq Khan \u2013 I am in violent agreement with him. I would now like nothing more than for Britain to be the 51st state.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not just because I\u2019m more closely politically aligned with Trump than Starmer. If Britain was part of the United States, Trump wouldn\u2019t hesitate to start deporting undocumented migrants, as he\u2019s 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 \u2018American Channel\u2019, so be it.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s our insane net-zero policy and our resulting electricity prices that is partly responsible for our GDP per capita being lower than Mississippi\u2019s, 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.<\/p>\n
Above all, there\u2019s 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 \u2013 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 \u2013 would not survive a First Amendment challenge. The moment we became the 51st state, they would all be placed in what Americans call \u2018the circular file\u2019, i.e. the bin.<\/p>\n
\nMr President, if you are reading this, I want you to know I stand ready to serve<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Of course, it won\u2019t ever happen \u2013 and I don\u2019t 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 \u2018would be met on day one by an institutional intifada\u2019. 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\u2019s was.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t 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\u2019s eligible, and unlike in the US, you don\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019re reading this, I want you to know I stand ready to serve. Let\u2019s make Britain great again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When I was a young man, the claim that Britain was in danger of becoming the 51st state…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":310235,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5018,3,4],"tags":[748,32,393,4884,40,807,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-310234","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"category-uk","9":"category-united-kingdom","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-donald-trump","12":"tag-england","13":"tag-great-britain","14":"tag-immigration","15":"tag-keir-starmer","16":"tag-northern-ireland","17":"tag-scotland","18":"tag-uk","19":"tag-united-kingdom","20":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114955592904126120","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310234\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/310235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}