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Britain First
The conclusion of a very depressing article from the Spectator. The decline of Christianity not only helps to explain the crisis of conservatism in Britain. It also forms part of the wider process of covert Europeanisation. Many of us still fondly imagine that we have more in common with 'our American cousins' than with our Continental neighbours. It may have been true once (though I find it hard to say exactly when). But it is certainly not true now. Travel to the United States and then to the other European Union states, and you will see: the typical British family looks much more like the typical German family than the typical American family. We eat Italian food. We watch Spanish soccer. We drive German cars. We work Belgian hours. And we buy second homes in France. Above all, we bow before central government as only true Europeans can. And perhaps nothing illustrates more clearly how very European we are becoming than our attitudes to the United States. Asked in a recent poll to choose between the two candidates for the presidency, 47 per cent of us favoured John Kerry, compared with just 16 per cent who backed George Bush — at a time when Bush was more than 10 per cent ahead in the American polls. On the legitimacy of the Iraq war, too, the British public is now closer to Continental opinion than to American. All this suggests that Tony Blair's devout Atlanticism may actually represent the special relationship's last gasp. For a strategic partnership needs more to sustain it than an affinity between the principals and the self-interest of a few professional elites. It requires a congruence of national interests. It also needs some convergence of popular attitudes. By both those criteria, the Anglo-American alliance is surely living on borrowed time. The Iraq war may not have destroyed Mr Bush and Mr Blair. But it has surely laid bare the asymmetry of the relationship between Washington and London. If the special relationship were a transatlantic flight, they would be in the cockpit. We would be the sleeping passengers. It is surely time to get our foreign policy up off the flatbed. Niall Ferguson is Professor of History at Harvard University and a Senior Research Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. His latest book is Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire, published by Penguin. Posted by: Mrs. Davis 2004-09-24 |
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