In the National Interest

     After the past two weeks here in the US, there may be a conclusion with regard to the election of a new Speaker of the House of Representatives.

     Ohio Republican Representative John Boehner has been at the post (which among other things, is second in line to the presidency) since 2011, when his party took control of the lower chamber of Congress, but announced his resignation last month. In his place was supposed to Kevin McCarthy of California, who is the current Majority Leader in the House. However, he was beset with criticism over his relative inexperience as a Member of Congress, as well as for his public gaffe’s, which include the apparent revelation that the Republican-led committee investigating the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya may have been a vehicle for attempting to damage then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is currently seeking the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.

Current Speaker of the House, John Boehner of Ohio. Gage Skidmore  via Flickr cc

     But the biggest issue he faced was the potential opposition from about 40 hard-right backbenchers, who (despite political reality) do not want to makes compromises with the Democrats in the Senate (where Republicans have a majority, but not have enough members to overcome a potential Democratic filibuster) or with President Barack Obama, who wields the veto pen (and will not, for example, sign a bill that will overturn his signature health care law).

     Even so, McCarthy had every expectation to get enough votes from his fellow Republicans to nominate him as Speaker behind closed doors before a vote before the full House with the Democrats, where the Republican majority should have ensured him the speakership. But at the last minute, he withdrew his candidacy to the shock of virtually everyone in the Washington Beltway and the wider political world. In doing so, he threw what was supposed to be a more-or-less pre-arraigned process into total disarray as John Boehner announced that the election would be postponed indefinitely.

     Since then, the party has been looking again for a person to ascend to the role which Boehner wishes to vacate. The problem is that no one (especially people with White House ambitions) really wants the job because they know that it will likely be their political graveyard.

Congressman Kevin McCarthy of California, the House Majority Leader. U.S. Government and Printing Office (Public Domain)

     Indeed, part of the reason why Boehner wants out is because much of his time as Speaker has been characterized by dealing with the divisions within his own party. Even though the Republicans have had a majority in the House since 2011, Boehner has had a tough time ensuring that he could get a majority of them to vote with him on contentious issues, such as raising the debt ceiling and passing a budget. A small but vocal minority of hard right conservatives (known as the House Freedom Caucus) have attempted to use showdowns on budgets and the debt ceiling to force the defunding of things to which they objected, such as "Obamacare" and Planned Parenthood.

     Boehner knew that Senate Democrats (who had a majority until this year) would block such measures and even if they made it to the White House, the president would veto them. A long-time representative and establishment figure, he knew that compromises would have to be made, but would be forced to go to the brink by this minority of representatives – many of whom have been elected only within the last five years on a platform of opposing Obama. Eventually, Boehner would be able to push through his agenda, but only after high stakes drama and the threat of government shutdowns, and indeed, there was a costly shutdown in 2013.

     This was why Boehner wants to leave, but with almost no one else amongst House Republicans wanting the speakership for the same reasons, this caused some outside-the-box thinking – literally, since there’s nothing in the Constitution which states that the Speaker must be a member of the House. Names of prominent Republicans who are no longer in public office had been mentioned, including former vice president Dick Cheney and Newt Gingrich of Georgia, who served as Speaker from 1995-1998 while a member of House.

     The most intriguing possibility was the election of a compromise candidate between Democrats and Republicans who are tired of the obstruction by their fellow members (i.e., the tyranny of the minority). After all, the Speaker needs only support from a majority of the overall House, and need not come from the majority party, and indeed, a Speaker having broad support from throughout the House may have been the ideal that our Founding Fathers wanted.

     Nevertheless, speakers elected along party lines has usually been the tradition, and anybody who broke this mold would have be taken an enormous risk.

     However, it now appears that conventional thinking will prevail with the announcement that Congressman Paul Ryan will seek the nomination to become Speaker. The 45 year old representative from Wisconsin has been a member of the House since 1999, and ran for vice president as Mitt Romney’s running mate in 2012. Ryan is well-regarded throughout the party and seen as a unity or consensus candidate, which is why he was the most often-mentioned name for the job. But he – currently the chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee – expressed no interest in it.

     But after coming under much pressure, Ryan has announced this week that he would become a candidate for becoming Speaker, but only on certain conditions (more on that later). Yet, even if he becomes Speaker on party lines, it may well lead to the end of his political career and any prospect of occupying the White House in the future due to the hard choices he will have to make which may make him deeply unpopular with the base voters of the Republican Party. If John Boehner ends up serving the remainder of his term as Speaker, he is looking at the possibility of calling on Democrats to help get around the rebel backbenchers and push legislation through.

Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan - the reluctant Seeker for the Job . Gage Skidmore via Flickr CC

     All of this has been presented as taking one for the team, or more appropriately, doing what’s best for the country.

     This is nothing particularly new – the notion of a politician stepping up to do things in the national interest, and often in the face of opposition by his or her own party. John F. Kennedy wrote about this in his book, Profiles in Courage, and how some of his predecessors in the US Senate put themselves into great political and personal jeopardy by doing what they believed was best for the country.  

     In Britain, a politician who comes to mind in this regard is Ramsay MacDonald, a man who remains quite controversial in British politics.

     MacDonald was born in Lossiemouth, Scotland and was a founder of the Labour Party. In 1924, he led a minority government as the first Labour prime minister of the United Kingdom (and the first from a working class background), but only lasted for less than 10 months. Five years later, Labour was elected back into power with MacDonald as prime minister for a second term with a larger mandate this time around, although he still led a minority government with support from the Liberal Party.

     Two years later, MacDonald was faced with dealing with the economic crisis that had begun with the 1929 Stock Market Crash, and had blown into the Great Depression. As unemployment soared and government finances deteriorated, MacDonald’s government struggled as it attempted to reconcile two conflicting aims: balancing the budget to maintain the Gold Standard and prevent a run on the pound, as well as maintaining social welfare assistance to the poor and unemployed. A committee was appointed to review public finances, which in July 1931 recommended sweeping reductions in public spending (including welfare and unemployment payments) and public sector wage cuts to avoid a budget deficit. MacDonald and a majority of the Cabinet agreed with the need to balance the budget, but this was a slim majority, with the Cabinet effectively split down the middle and senior ministers – some of whom wanted to enact countercyclical fiscal policies advocated by John Maynard Keynes – threatening to resign from the government in protest.

     Faced with this, MacDonald was prepared to tender his own resignation to King George V, but the King insisted that MacDonald should stay at his post and lead a National Government with Conservatives and Liberals. MacDonald knew that if he did this, he would draw fire from his party and bring odium to himself, but the King believed that – in this moment of crisis – that MacDonald was the only man who could be prime minister and make the decisions to get the country on track.

Ramsay MacDonald, Britain's first Labour Prime Minister. George Grantham Bain Collection - U.S. Library of Congress

     MacDonald agreed to form a National Government, which meant bringing down his own Labour government, and by doing so, he and other Labour people who supported the National Government were expelled from the party that he had helped to create. In the ensuing general election that year, the National Government won 554 seats – one of the largest electoral mandates in British political history, and though MacDonald remained prime minister, he was only one of a handful of pro-coalition Labourites (under the name National Labour), and the government was dominated by the Conservatives. The main Labour Party itself suffered its worst defeat up to that time, and took over a decade to recover, which only stiffened the antipathy toward MacDonald, even though he still believed himself to be a Labour man and believed that the National Government would be temporary.

     Under his watch, the government finances were righted with the reductions to public spending, and the economy eventually began to turn around. He resigned as prime minister in 1935 due to declining health, and died two years later at the age of 71, leaving a mixed legacy behind.

     To some Labour Party members to this day, MacDonald is seen as a power-hungry traitor who made incestuous deals with the enemy – the Tories – to stay in Downing Street at the expense of his party and the people he was supposed to represent – the working classes. On the other hand, he is also viewed as a co-founder of that party who helped to carry it from being a protest organization to being a legitimate party of government, and who when on to make tough decisions in the national interest of the UK. In both veins, he can be considered courageous for doing what he believed was right.

     More recently in our time, the decision of Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats to join a coalition government with David Cameron and the Conservatives following the hung parliament of the 2010 general election is arguably another example of a politician risking so much for himself and his party in the pursuit of doing what was thought best for the national interest. With the British economy still reeling from the effects of the financial crisis and Great Recession, compounded with the eurozone crisis and other international economic issues, it seemed only reasonable for them to join forces with Tories, who were the biggest party in the House of Commons, but just short of achieving an overall majority.

     As with Ramsay MacDonald in 1931, Nick Clegg believed – or at least, made everyone else believe – that in a moment of crisis, a strong coalition government was needed to steer the UK, as opposed to a weak minority Tory government. One path offered stability and a path way to recovery, the other offered instability and an economic roller coaster, along with a potential second election that year. Financial markets and businesses, who prefer stability and certainty, would have questioned the ability of the British government to handle its affairs, especially if there were multiple elections and uncertainty of who would lead the country.

Nick Clegg's Decision to Join the Conservatives in a coalition government was controversial in 2010 and has Cost his party dearly. Chatham House via Flickr  CC

     As it was, the Nick Clegg took his party into coalition with the Tories, and to the surprise of most political observers, the coalition government – with Cameron has prime minister and Clegg as deputy prime minister – survived through the end of the five year parliament. However, the LibDems ended up paying a huge electoral price for being seen as propping up the Tories and acquiescing to their program of austerity, which included the raising of tuition fees (which the LibDems had promised they would abolish). They were credited in some circles for putting the brakes on (or watering down) some of the more controversial policy proposals from the Conservatives – such as overturning the Human Rights Act and weakening the fox hunting ban. In the end however, it did not really matter. They lost waves of seats in local council elections, the elections to the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly, the 2014 EU election, and in this year, the UK parliamentary election in which they were reduced from 57 seats to just eight.

     Back home in the US, the saga over who becomes the next speaker may not lead to such consequences, but there’s the chance that it could, especially if the new Speaker is a Republican who uses Democratic votes to get legislation through, or – more unconventionally – the new Speaker is a compromise between both parties. One party or the other will accuse people within it of treachery and selling out for power and prestige.

     However, this likely will not be happening since Paul Ryan relented under pressure to step up and offer himself as the Republican nominee for the speakership, albeit on the certain conditions – most significantly, that he must have House Republicans united around him if he is to be the consensus candidate for the job and if he is to be an effective Speaker. To this end, he made an appeal to acting in the national interest – saying the speakership was not a job he wanted or ever sought, but that he came to the conclusion that this was “a very dire moment”, not just for Congress or the Republican Party, but for the entire United States, for without effective leadership in the “People’s House”, the business of the nation cannot be done.

     He made it clear that he is a principled conservative who will not acquiesce to the White House, but also made it clear that he wants to lead as the principle spokesperson and agenda setter for the House GOP without the threat of revolts from the hard right of the sort that have made John Boehner’s life a living hell for the better part of the last four years. For more assurances, Ryan has said that he will seek to make it more difficult to remove a sitting speaker, which is a procedure that requires only a simple majority vote. Some Republicans balked at these demands, but it appears that Ryan has pulled the great bulk of them together, including most members of the Freedom Caucus), and this has given him a clear pathway for the nomination and the speakership itself.

     Whichever way it goes for the Republicans (and for that matter, politicians of any party in the US or UK), the common refrain is that so often, those who step up and make sacrifices – personally and politically – for the good of the country are often vilified and do not receive any thanks for it, except in the annals of political history, and usually long after such people step away from the political stage. They do what others either cannot or will not do due to the lack of political courage, and they know very well that it all may well come crashing down on them in the end. In a hyper-charged political era where we ask for more statesmanship from our politicians, perhaps it is time that such people were looked in a more measured light in their time, and ours.

Transatlantic Discontent

The establishment of British and American politics have been shaken up in recent years by people such as (from left to right) Jeremy Corbyn, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, Nicola Sturgeon, and Nigel Farage.

Image Credits: Corbyn: See Li via Flickr, Sanders: Marc Nozell via Flickr cc, Trump: Michael Vadon via Flickr cc, Sturgeon: Ninian Reid via Flickr cc, Farage: Euro Realist Newsletter via Flickr. Modifications and montage by Wesley Hutchins.

     In the United Kingdom, the winter of 1978-1979 has been known as the Winter of Discontent, a phrase coming from the opening line of William Shakespeare’s Richard III: “Now is the Winter of our Discontent / Made glorious summer by this sun of York”. It describes a period of economic and political malaise in the country which resulted in the election of the Conservative Party under Margaret Thatcher and the greatest sea change in British politics since Clement Attlee’s Labour government following World War II.

     Over 35 years later, it can be said that with regard to Britain, “the isle is full of noises”, and this is borrowed from another line by Shakespeare – this time, from The Tempest. Certainly, it does describe the rapidly changing and seemingly restless nature of British politics and society today. The improbable rise of the Scottish National Party (SNP), the UK Independence Party (UKIP), other political and social movements, and the once unthinkable notion of a politician like Jeremy Corbyn leading Her Majesty’s Opposition have rocked the political establishment.

     All of these movements speak to the disenchantment with mainstream politics and the embrace of what are considered to be the fringes on both the left and right ever since the financial crisis of 2007-2008 and the subsequent Great Recession. The economic downturn combined with austerity measures and the general feeling that the establishment is not adequately responding to the needs of the people has made for a vastly cynical populace that no longer wishes to take its cues from the establishment and now listens to, and supports, whatever and whoever speaks to them.

     This has resulted in the fracturing of British politics as the broad consensus shared by the main political parties – Labour, Conservatives, and the Liberal Democrats – appears to be coming undone, and even though the “center” did hold in the recent general election with a (slim) majority Conservative government being returned to power under Prime Minister David Cameron, it appears that the current political upheaval has not yet run its course, and there are parallels across the Pond in America.

***

     The election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the opposition Labour Party on September 12, 2015 was nothing less than a repudiation of the centrist establishment that had been running the UK’s leading left-wing party since the election of Tony Blair as leader in 1994. Blair had led the party to three straight general election victories in 1997, 2001, and 2005 – ushering 13 years of a Labour government with him as prime minister, and making him the most successful leader of the party and the longest-serving Labour prime minister.

     But there has always been an undercurrent of Labour supporters and sympathizers who believed that the party had drifted to far to the right in order to capture the center ground of British politics and win elections, and when Blair’s successor Gordon Brown lost the election of 2010 and resigned as party leader, one of his protégés, Ed Miliband, won the leadership – helped along with the backing of the trade unions who preferred him over his Blairite older brother David. Under Miliband’s leadership, the party edged to the left, but struggled to present a clear and viable alternative to the coalition government of the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats under David Cameron, which emerged after the electorate had produced a hung parliament with the Tories as the biggest party but with no overall control of the House of Commons.

     Indeed, it was felt that the party had become “Tory-lite” – merely going for changes along the edges of what the Tory-led government was doing, and not vigorously opposing its agenda of austerity, which the Tories have said was due to Labour spending too much and racking up huge budget deficits. All of this came against the backdrop of the financial crisis and Great Recession, during which Labour under Gordon Brown had bailed out failing banks and engaged in extra spending to stave off a deeper crisis. But Labour’s credibility on the economy was heavily damaged by all this, which resulted in the Conservative-Liberal Democrat government.

     That government engaged in a program of fiscal austerity, which proved very controversial because it involved cutting benefits and housing payments to the unemployed/underemployed, implementing welfare reform, increasing tuition fees for universities, privatizing the Royal Mail, and expanding the use of private delivery of public services (including the National Health Service), and other measures designed to reduce the deficit and put the country back on track.

     But for many, these were nothing less than going after the poorest and most vulnerable in order to pay for the financial calamity brought about by lightly-regulated banks, and as the economy struggled to bounce back with austerity measures in place, the government became very unpopular.

     The Liberal Democrats, as the junior partners of the coalition government with party leader Nick Clegg as deputy prime minister, suffered the most from a backlash by some of those who had voted for it as an alternative to both Labour and the Tories in 2010. Most significant among younger voters was its acquiescence to the increase in tuition fees, which it had pledged to oppose during the election, and this became emblematic of a party more concerned about power than its promises.

     Ideally, it was Labour that should have reaped the rewards of this discontent, but the party suffered from three major problems. One was that while people were willing to support a Labour government in the abstract, they could not imagine Ed Miliband – lampooned as Wallace from Wallace and Grommit in the press – as prime minister. Second was the sense that Labour – not wanting to abandon the center ground – was not putting forth a distinct and viable vision from that of the coalition government and the Tories in particular. This leads to the third issue: the rise of left-wing alternatives.

     In Scotland, the SNP under Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon had portrayed Labour as part of the “Westminster Establishment”, where it along with Tories and LibDems were virtually indistinguishable from one another, and also complicit in the recent parliamentary expenses scandal, and other – real and imagined – “Westminster misdoings.” This was played to the hilt during the independence referendum campaign during which all three parties participated in the Better Together campaign to keep the United Kingdom together. Even after they were defeated, the Nationalists saw a spike in popularity as the message about Labour being no different from the Tories resonated in places such as Glasgow and West Central Scotland, Lanarkshire, and Dundee, which had been voting Labour for generations, but now felt disillusioned and taken for granted by a party which had (supposedly) abandoned its traditional working class and left-wing values in pursuit of chasing Tory votes in Middle England, and had been standing “should-to-shoulder” with the Tories during the referendum – leading to pejorative of “Red Tories.”

     In England and Wales, the party was treated on similar grounds by the Green Party and the Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru, but it was in Scotland where the energies of referendum campaign had spilled over to general election this year and resulted in Labour losing 40 of its 41 Scottish seats to the SNP, including that of Jim Murphy, the leader of the party in Scotland. Overall, Labour was defeated across the UK and a majority Tory government emerged, helped along with an economy that was showing signs of life, which boosted the Tories economic credibility and prevented Labour from overcoming the economic baggage associated with it during the financial crisis.

     Ed Miliband resigned, and the party was in search of a new leader. The initial three candidates – Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper, and Liz Kendall – were establishment figures who were more-or-less committed to keeping Labour in the center in the belief that a lurch to the left of Miliband would do the party no favors. Nevertheless, just enough MP’s nominated the obscure backbencher and left-winger Jeremy Corbyn, the 66 year old MP for North Islington, to be placed on the ballot in the leadership election. Many of them nominated him not such because they wanted or expected him to win the leadership, but because they hoped he would broaden the debate within the party and show that there was at least still a place for left-winger like Corbyn.

Jeremy Corbyn - the party republican rebel-turned-Leader of Her Majesty's Most Loyal Opposition. Image Credit: David Holt via Flickr cc

     But as the other candidates failed to impress, Corbyn tapped into an antiestablishment sentiment throughout the UK, and was soon on the rise. He was helped along by hundreds of thousands of new members to the party and many more who paid £3.00 ($4.60) to be a “registered supporter” of the party and voted for him. Establishment figures such as Tony Blair and Gordon Brown warned against his election as leader and emphasized the need to be in power, but increasing numbers of Labour members and sympathizers – many of whom had been disillusioned by the rightward direction of the party – were in no mood to listen to who they saw as unimaginative dinosaurs from another era that had the party ever farther away from its traditional roots as a party that stood up against vested interests and demanded radical action to improve society for everyone – especially the disadvantaged and working classes.

     The result was that Corbyn was elected with nearly 60% of the vote – a huge popular mandate larger than Blair’s in 1994 – on this tide of antiestablishment feeling to become the most left-wing leader of the Labour Party since the 1930’s.

     Among other things, he is a republican who believes that the British monarchy ought to be abolished (though he has said that this is not a priority). Corbyn would like to see Britain give up its nuclear deterrent in the form of the sea-based Trident program, and by extension, wants to terminate membership of NATO, which is after all, a nuclear-tipped military alliance. For that matter, he wants Britain to reduce its military commitments and stay out of military interventions. He has shown a lukewarm attitude toward the UK’s membership of EU – partly out of concern for worker’s rights and the economic bloc’s negotiations on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with the United States. Corbyn favors higher taxes – especially on the wealthy, and wants to reverse the current course of austerity with increased government spending, alongside the Bank of England printing more money as part of what he calls a “people’s QE” – a reference to the quantitative easing (QE) provided to banks during the financial crisis and recession. Most significantly, he favors the renationalization of industries and public services that have been privatized over the last four decades, such as railroads and energy companies.

     Taken together, this amounts to a complete reversal of everything that has characterized Labour in the last generation or so – away from moderate social democratic thinking, rejecting the politics of the Third Way, definitively dispensing with the “New Labour” brand, and returning to socialism.

     Much ink has already been spilled on, and hot air released about, the death of not just New Labour, but the Labour Party as a significant political force in the United Kingdom which strives to be viable and competent alternative to the current government, and more crucially, actually wishes to be in government and hold the reins of power.

     Indeed, with the collapse of the Liberal Democrats following their involvement in the coalition with the Tories, it would seem that the Tories are on their way to perpetual rule. But they have a majority of only 12 in the Commons, and even though this can be bolstered to around 30 with the support of Democratic Unionist (DUP) and Ulster Unionist (UUP) MP’s and the exclusion of the abstentionist Sinn Fein MP’s from Northern Ireland , the reality is that the Tories have their own problems.

     Before the election, they were most concerned about a threat from the right in the form of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), which wants to terminate the UK’s membership of the European Union (EU). Under party leader Nigel Farage, the party had succeeded in campaigning against the increasing influence of the EU over British internal affairs, thanks to the Lisbon Treaty, which was signed off by the last Labour government. It also exploited public anxieties and concerns over immigration – mostly from the EU (with its policy of freedom of movement among member states) and especially after restrictions to some former Eastern Bloc countries were lifted in the last decade as they acceded to EU membership. This too was done by the last Labour administration, and indeed, it was perceived as out of touch with the public on immigration, especially after former Prime Minister Gordon Brown had called a voter “bigoted” after she asked him questions on immigration during the general election campaign on 2010.

     Meanwhile, David Cameron of the Tories had called on his party to stop “banging on” about Europe, for even though it was the Conservatives who took Britain into what was then the European Economic Community (EEC) under Edward Heath in 1973, ever since the Maastricht Treaty which formally created the European Union, the party has struggled with divisions over the issue of whether to be a member. Indeed, those who started UKIP were former Tories like Farage who disagreed with Maastricht, which was negotiated and signed off by John Major in 1992, because they saw it as a sell-out of Britain’s sovereignty. Fast-forward to more recent times, and the issue of immigration – among others – has animated those who are “Eurosceptics” and wish to see the UK control its borders. This includes many Tory MP’s, especially those elected in 2010 and in this year, who were elected partly on the basis of getting tough on immigration and reversing the influence of the EU on Britain, especially on British laws.

The colorful pint-drinking leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), Nigel Farage, who wants to see Britain terminate its membership of the European Union. Image Credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr cc

     During the last government, support for UKIP – which Cameron once dismissed as “fruitcakes, loonies, and closet racists” – increased dramatically as immigration numbers went up (despite David Cameron pledging to keep them down), as more EU laws applied to Britain, and as Britain’s participation in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) seemingly made it virtually impossible to deport foreign criminals and radical clerics.

     In the face of this and more than a few backbench rebellions over Europe, Cameron in 2013 announced that should his party win the next general election, he would seek to reform the terms of Britain’s existing membership of the EU, following which he would hold a referendum on that reformed membership by 2017. In the local elections of 2013 and the EU parliamentary elections in 2014, this did not seem to help Cameron or his party as UKIP made major gains in these elections, and in particular, topped the EU poll last year. Later on, there were two UK parliamentary defections from the Tories to UKIP, and the threat of several more as UKIP appeared to be gaining strength at the expense of the Tories heading into the general election.

     As it was, the Tories held themselves together to win the election outright – their first such election victory in 23 years – by campaigning hard on the notion that voting for UKIP would result in taking votes from the Conservatives in critical constituencies and result in Labour winning the election (or even worse, a minority Labour government at the beck-and-call of the SNP), and that only a Tory government could deliver an referendum on reformed membership of the EU.

     However, as much as that strategy worked, it masked the divisions within the party which will likely become increasingly apparent as the referendum gets closer. David Cameron, his Chancellor of the Exchequer (and potential successor) George Osborne, and many others are almost certain to campaign on a vote to keep EU membership – mostly in agreement with business interests which want unabated access to the 500-millon strong common market of the EU, but there are also others – possibly led by London Mayor Boris Johnson (another possible Tory leadership contender) – who may reject the reformed terms and campaign to terminate membership. The current refugee/migrant crisis in continental Europe may tip the balance in favor of leaving the EU because of the EU’s policy of free movement among member states.

     David Cameron may hope for a united Tory front on Europe, but this appears increasingly unlikely, and he may find himself campaigning against his own MP’s, and possibly members of the cabinet as well in a referendum campaign. Despite moving to the Right to hold things together, the issue isn’t going away for the Prime Minister, and may result in a fracturing of the Right, as is currently the case with the Left.

     In addition, there has been a sense that the Conservatives have become more “metropolitan” by supporting initiatives such as the legalization of same-sex marriage. This was an example of the influence of the Liberal Democrats in the last government, but also of the Tories themselves taking a page out of the New Labour playbook and modernizing to become more acceptable to a wider electorate (and to shake off being the “Nasty Party”). It was no wonder that David Cameron was referred to as the “heir to Blair” among some sections of the press during the early years of his leadership.

     Nevertheless, this modernization – among other things – has angered some in the more traditionalist base of the party, and threatened to detail the party’s chances of winning this year. That did not happen, but if there are further ruptures among the different factions of the party and Cameron is unable to contain them, British politics will definitely be a whole new ball game if the center is indeed, unable to hold.

     Across the Pond in the United States, politics has not entirely fractured in this way, for we still have tightly-knit two party system between the Democratic and Republican parties. But there are and have been antiestablishment undercurrents in recent years which may have an effect on the trajectory of the parties and American politics.

     Among the parallels with politics in the UK, there is a feeling that the government is not doing enough to protect the interests of ordinary people since the onslaught of the financial crisis and Great Recession, and that instead, they serve special interest groups and wealthy campaign contributors to the detriment of everyone else.

     As with Britain, the financial crisis prompted the US government – then led by Republican President George W. Bush – to spend vast sums of money bailing out banks that were deemed “too big to fail”. As the economy went into recession and hundreds of jobs were lost, the American public punished the Republicans and elected Illinois Democratic Senator Barack Obama in 2008 as the nation’s first African-American president, and strengthened his party’s command of both houses of Congress, which meant that for the first time since 1995, all elected parts of the US federal government – both houses of Congress and the White House – were controlled by the Democratic Party.

     As Obama and the Democrats went forward on stimulus spending in the hope of helping the economy to recover and not just bailing out financial institutions (mortgage companies, banks, investment houses, insurance companies, etc.), but also the American automobile industry. The President also successfully pushed through health care reform legislation (known popularly and pejoratively as "Obamacare") to achieve nearly universal health insurance coverage for all Americans.

     However, there was a backlash against what was seen as too much spending and too much bailing out, particularly on political cronies and interest groups. On the right, the Tea Party movement rose in robust reaction to President Obama’s policies and was embraced by the Republican Party, who were able to ride on a wave of anti-Obama sentiment and wrested control of the House of Representatives – though not the Senate – from the Democrats in the 2010 mid-term elections.

     Since then, the Republicans have had to contend with the antiestablishment rhetoric being turned on them, for the establishment – for all of their use of bluster and rhetoric against the Democrats – want to get things done and know that in order to do so, they have to work with the Democrats and make compromises. However, the new intake of Republicans has been in no mood to compromise. They believe they were given a strict and solid mandate to oppose Obama’s policies – not least “Obamacare” – and wanted nothing more than to bring the President down to his knees and force him to agree to their demands.

     Their opposition to Obama was based on a general and ideological belief in small government, and that Obama’s policies were increasing the size and scope of government beyond what the Founding Fathers intended when they wrote the Constitution. So they therefore saw themselves was standing up for a strict interpretation of the Constitution, which would see the federal government shrivel up to something vastly different to what it is now. In addition, there have been – as in the UK – a myriad of social issues that animate religious fundamentalists, such as abortion and same-sex marriage, and several Republicans were elected on the basis of opposing those things.

     Over time, this has manifested in government shutdowns and threats of government shutdowns as some of the more ideologically-pure Republican members refused to even support their own party’s leadership on passing budgets to fund the government and raising the debt ceiling in the hope that doing so would force Obama’s hand. None of these attempts have really succeeded in doing anything to force the President on a u-turn of his major policies, and have actually hurt the Republicans, as they have been seen as sore losers who did not accept the Obama’s victory in 2008 or his reelection in 2012. In addition, the military ban on openly homosexual soldiers has been lifted, and the Supreme Court has struck down the state-by-state bans on same-sex marriage.

     Nevertheless, this strain of Republican politics hasn’t gone away, as is obvious by the rise of real-estate developer and celebrity television host Donald Trump, who has successfully tapped into the disillusionment among grassroots Republicans who feel that the party has been inept in confronting Obama and that whole political establishment is rotten to the core. As a candidate for the Republican nomination for the presidency in next year’s general election, Trump has reignited the flames of the issue of illegal immigration as he has made controversial remarks about immigrants and questioning the long-established legality of birthright citizenship. He has also made a name by showing condescension and contempt for the establishment. In turn, he has shot up in the polls as the unexpected frontrunner for the nomination as a populist straight-talker who is not connected to the Washington establishment or the well-heeled donor class.

Controversial, outspoken, and unchained to anybody but himself, Donald Trump has emerged as the unexpected front-runner for the Republican Party's presidential nominating contest. Image Credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr cc

     The result has been that established figures such as former Florida Governor Jeb Bush – son and brother of two former presidents – Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, and Ohio Governor John Kasich are now in single digits in most polling, with Trump and another outsider, Dr. Ben Carson, leading the pack with former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina making a recent surge thanks to an unhappy base within the party that views many in the establishment as just as bad as Obama, if not worse.  Some of them had problems with George W. Bush and his brand “compassionate conservatism”, which to them resulted in making government bigger, spending more money, running bigger deficits, and promoting immigration reform with some form of amnesty or pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants already in the country – all of which has resulted in the term “RINO’s” (Republicans In Name Only) to describe moderate or liberal Republicans.

     Meanwhile on the Democratic side, the landscape is not as fractious or acrimonious, but there are still signs of restlessness towards the establishment in the form of Hillary Clinton.

     Like the Labour Party in the UK, the Democratic Party in the US had to moderate from its more left-wing stances to become electable to an electorate that gave two landslide victories to Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984, and another one to George H.W. Bush in 1988. Four years later, Arkansas Democrat Bill Clinton won the presidency and won reelection in 1996 as a “New Democrat” who was pro-business, pro-military, and deficit-conscious, while still extolling the virtues of the New Deal (which brought Social Security) and the Great Society (which brought Medicare, Medicaid, and civil rights reforms).

     But Clinton also got flak from the left flank of his party for signing anti-crime legislation which they claim has resulted in a disproportionate number of poor people and ethnic minorities going to jail and giving America the highest prisoner population among advanced economies. The liberal left has also criticized Clinton-era welfare reforms, which were made as a compromise with the Republican-controlled Congress, and have seen tougher limits on the availability of welfare benefits, which they see go against the spirit of the New Deal and the legacy of Franklin D. Roosevelt. On top of all this was the sense that the Democrats had gotten too close to big money and Wall Street in particular, and also supported the Bush-era wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (which were contentious issues as well against the Labour Party in Britain).

     Enter Barack Obama, who challenged President Clinton’s wife Hillary, then a US Senator from New York, for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 and won on a platform of being antiwar and took on the orthodoxy of the centrist establishment that had been running the party since the Clinton era.

     But even under Obama, some of the more strident left wing voices – while applauding him for healthcare reform and overseeing progress on LGBT rights – have criticized him for not doing enough and being too cautious in the White House with regard to poverty (especially in urban areas), taking on the criminal justice system (with the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement), gun control (as his presidency has witnessed several mass shootings), more forcefully taking on banks and corporate interests, and doing something about the increasing gap between rich and poor.

     Now Hillary Clinton, who served as Obama’s first Secretary of State, is running again for the nomination, and as a person who is to the right of Obama, some grassroots Democrats looked elsewhere for a candidate who appealed to them.

     Enter Bernie Sanders, the independent, self-described “democratic socialist” senator from Vermont, who has become a serious contender for the Democratic nomination by running to the left of Clinton (and even Obama) and appealing to those who have felt left out by the more centrist establishment, in a similar fashion that Jeremy Corbyn is doing with regard to the Labour Party in the UK. So far, Clinton is still the prohibitive front-runner for the nomination, and it is expected that most Democrats will support her if she wins. However, there will likely be an expectation that she (or anybody else) takes the party in a more left-wing and “progressive” direction on a variety of issues, and effectively overturn some of the legacy of her husband’s presidency and the steps that Democrats took to become electable on a national basis.

Hillary Clinton has been feeling the "bern" because independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has electrified that left wing of the Democratic Party in his run for the presidential nomination. Image Credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr cc

     But if the Left in Britain and America wishes to succeed electorally with people like Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders, it has a lot to prove in order to win. Most importantly in my opinion, it has to provide a definitive answer to whenever images of 1970’s malaise are shown on both sides of the Atlantic – high interest rates, stagnant economies, back-to-back strikes, energy crises, trash piling in the streets, and etc. There are many people – including members and supporters – who lived during those times and don’t remember them fondly, compared to some on the Left who look back at those days as the golden era of the Post-War Consensus (Keynesian economics, high taxes, high regulations, a generous welfare state, and in the case of Britain – nationalized industries) that had dominated transatlantic politics regardless of party since the end of World War II.

     When that consensus started coming undone by forces beyond the control of governments (i.e., globalization, the rise of competitive overseas economies, etc.) and people suffered as a result, the Left had no adequate or credible answer for the electorate, who in response, elected right-leaning governments in the form of Ronald Reagan in the US and Margaret Thatcher in the UK, who had a simple answer: government was the problem, not the solution. They successfully challenged the Post-War Consensus – saying that it resulted in the crises of the 1970’s – and pushed for a new direction of liberalized markets, less regulation, lower taxes, free trade, and shrinking the government in domestic affairs. In the process, they forged a new establishment consensus that has been in place ever since and hardly challenged.

     The Left has to challenge that consensus of our time with a credible and sustainable alternative, just as Thatcher and Reagan challenged what was the consensus in their time with something that – for better or worse – has so far outlived both of them, and has (it had to admitted) resulted in overall greater prosperity since the 1970’s on a macroeconomic level.

     Corbyn and his supporters believe that there millions of would-be voters who did not turn out last time around because Labour did not distinguish itself enough from the Tories, and that if Labour tapped into those voters and expanded the electorate, Labour will stand a chance to gain power under Corbyn. Leftist Democrats in America believe in the same thing – getting more people out and voting by being more radical and getting away from the center.

     However, just as former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once said that you have to work with the army you have, not the army you want, political parties of all persuasions have to work with the electorate they have as opposed to the electorate they wish to have. So often, people who say they will vote don’t actually vote – usually because they don’t think their votes will a difference, and even if they believe it can, they are skeptical of the party that offers sweeping change because they don’t believe that change can be delivered.

     Now to be fair, Barack Obama did manage to expand the electorate to people you had not voted before by engaging them with an inspiring vision of hope and good change for the future. At the same time however, that vision had to be a realistic one that could be bought into by moderate centrist voters, not least by some people in his own party. By doing this, he was able to assemble a broad coalition of voters which allowed him to win the Democratic nomination in 2008 and become a two-term president by winning in the North, South, East, and West.

     Some people believe that Obama has changed the trajectory of American politics to the left, and that with America’s demographic changes, the Democrats will be able to offer a more progressive and leftist vision for the country, especially at a time when the Republicans seemingly have a shrinking base and a dilemma on how to move forward in the face of that. Only time will tell.

     As for the Labour Party in the UK, it seems destined to take a left turn under Jeremy Corbyn, and the conventional wisdom is that it will not be in government again for another decade because the party has made itself unelectable with people more concerned about ideological purity than obtaining power. On the other hand, Corbyn has said that despite his personal views, he wants to see debate within the party on a variety of issues – making it more about what the membership wants rather than what he wants. So perhaps there can be an opportunity for the Blairites and other moderates within the party to have their say and influence party policy in a way that suits them, but is also agreeable to the rejuvenated left wing elements. Perhaps it is possible that Labour under Corbyn will have an inspiring and realistic vision for the UK that can unite the party and make it electable throughout Britain.

     In Scotland, the party faces a particularly difficult dilemma. It was beaten over the head by the SNP during the referendum and general election for “abandoning” its left-wing progressive principles in the pursuit of power, and lost almost everything on the basis of that rhetoric. After all, a common refrain from some former Scottish Labour voters is: “I didn’t leave Labour; Labour left me”, and “I’m not a nationalist; I’m a socialist!” But with the election of Corbyn as UK Labour leader, SNP leader and Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon tweeted that unless Labour quickly becomes a credible alternative to the Tories and win a UK general election, many Scots will conclude that independence is the only way to get a left-wing government.

     However, the SNP itself – despite what its most fervent supporters say – is not a socialist party. For the past 15 years or so, it has portrayed itself as a moderate social democratic party that has largely accepted the post-Thatcher consensus – so much so, that it once placed an emphasis on dropping corporate taxes to stimulate economic growth. The Nationalists attracted the support of “Middle Scotland” with popular polices such as the Council Tax freeze and “free” university tuition, and with the “Red Tory” rhetoric, has made inroads into the once dominant Labour areas of Central Scotland. But it has yet to enact anything particularly radical or redistributive with the powers already devolved to the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, in which it has an outright majority, and Nicola Sturgeon knows that Scotland is not as radical as has been made out to be, and that the SNP would not be where it is without the support of politically moderate Scots.

Having served as Deputy First Minister under Alex Salmond since 2007, Nicola Sturgeon succeeded him as First Minister of Scotland and leader of the SNP following the rejection of independence by Scottish voters, but her party has enjoyed a surge of support that allowed them to win all but three of Scotland's 59 seats in the UK House of Commons. Image Credit:  Christine McIntosh via Flickr cc

     Nevertheless, her party has gained traction on the idea that progressive thinking is a hallmark of Scottish politics, while English – or rather “Westminster” – politics can be characterized as reactionary, conservative, and therefore, “un-Scottish”, which again shows the need for breaking up Britain in her world view. Kezia Dugdale, the party’s leader in Scotland (and the eighth in 15 years), knows that up to a third – if not more – of her party’s traditional voters abandoned it during the referendum and general election, and that getting a substantial number of them back will be key for Labour to win power again, both in London and Edinburgh.  For this reason, perhaps one benefit from Corbyn is that he may be able to broaden the debate and show that British politics throughout the United Kingdom can be a place for left-wing thought, and that “Westminster” is not a monolithic entity.

     At the same time, the Scottish Conservatives – under leader Ruth Davidson – have to find some way of making their party more acceptable to the people of Scotland. Once the dominant party as late as the 1950’s, they went on a gradual decline and then lost all of their MP’s in the Blair landslide of 1997, and have only had one MP since 2001. This was partly due to Margaret Thatcher and some of her more unpopular policies such as the Community Charge (Poll Tax), which was rolled out in Scotland one year before the rest of Britain, and Thatcher – even in death, and having been out of power since 1990 – has been a four-letter word there, and has become a massive liability for her party. The sooner the Scottish Tories can make people seriously think about their policies and what they can do for the people of Scotland (and put Thatcher to one side), the better chance they have of winning.

     Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats, having been reduced from over 50 MP’s to only eight at the general election, are now making overtures to moderates in the Labour Party, who may become – if they are not already – disaffected by the leftward tilt of the party, and especially if they are completely shut out of debate and discussion over the party’s future and do not see at least some moderation from the unreconstructed Bennite that is Jeremy Corbyn.

     All of this means that more coalition governments may be in store for the UK going forward as more people on the left and right vote for niche parties rather than large “broad-church” parties with various factions. Compromises will still have to be made, though not in the parties, but in government among the parties that form coalitions. This then calls into question the UK’s first past the post (FPTP) electoral system, which worked when the Tories and Labour received over 90% of the vote and the system all but guaranteed one-party governments. But the decline of the two major parties to just 65% of the national popular vote (and with the Tories able to govern the UK with just 36% of it) has prompted debate on the need for electoral reform, which I have written about.

     Perhaps this is the new normal, and that the current Tory majority will prove to be a blip in the long-term view of things, and that some form of proportional representation – whether in the Commons or Lords – will be needed. Only time will tell.

     Meanwhile in America, our two-party system is still strong, but there are significant forces on the left and right that wish to see the parties move away from the center and take on a more ideological bent. Three months ago, I could have easily predicted that Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush would be the respective nominee’s of their parties for next year. Now, I genuinely cannot tell what is going to happen.

     Indeed, the big political story in America and Britain through the last several months is that the pundits have been proven wrong on so much. Few predicted that the Tories would have an outright majority of seats in the House of Commons in May, nobody gave Jeremy Corbyn a chance at winning the Labour leadership, and the rise of Trump and Sanders was on no one’s radar until recently.

     Right now, politics is going to be interesting to watch on both sides of the Atlantic. However, I do hope for what is best for our two countries, the United States and the United Kingdom, and that for all the rhetoric that gets thrown around, the current tide of antiestablishment politics, and the frustrations of people on a variety of issues, people can have a reasonable and civil debate about the future going forward for the benefit of generations to come. Anyone who believes in our hard-fought democratic traditions ought to agree with that, and have faith that the citizenry will make the right decisions in this period of noisy discontent.

American Indepedence and Britain Today

The Declaration of Independence

     Today marks the 239th anniversary marking the founding of the United States of America – the date when we formally adopted a Declaration of Independence which stated our national creed in the self-evident truth that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

     It was indeed, a momentous day when a group of men representing of thirteen colonies on the edge of a far-flung empire came together in Philadelphia to take a stand and act with boldness and courage to give birth to a new country, which has gone on to rise as one of the greatest, most powerful, and influential countries in the world – a symbol of freedom, hope, modernity, democracy, and opportunity.

     Today, I am proud to call myself an American and to call the United States my country, and on this day, I remember why we became independent and the values for which we fought in the process.

     Those values and ideals – representative government arguably the most important of them – were in part born from the Enlightenment and political traditions of the country from which we became independent: Great Britain.

     British democracy had by this time developed into a balanced relationship between monarchy, aristocracy, and the commons in which the monarch was still sovereign but Parliament (the aristocracy and commons) represented the supreme representative authority of the British people and had since the Glorious Revolution circumscribed the powers of the monarch so that on several issues such as taxation, the monarch could not act without the consent of Parliament.

     This principle, that the representatives of the people should work with the monarch, and not be overruled by him or her, had its roots in Britain’s constitutional heritage going back over hundreds of years – including Magna Carta, the Declaration of Arbroath, the Petition of Right, and the English Bill of Rights. More recently, it was rooted in the Whig Party which believed that the monarch – at least at some level – was answerable to the people, and could not claim absolute authority from God.

     The Whig ideal of representative government traveled across the Atlantic, where the Thirteen Colonies had established their own assemblies based on the British Parliament at Westminster in London. There, the colonists could elect their own representatives to debate matters of concern to them and make decisions for the general benefit of the population. This was especially true during the period of Salutary Neglect, when Parliament made little to no effort to enforce laws made in London on the colonists, and the colonies were largely able to do their own thing within the imperial system.

     It was only after 1763 when laws started be enforced with renewed vigor. This was in response to the fact that the British military had fought to defend American interests in the North American theater of the Seven Years’ War, known as the French and Indian War. Britain emerged victorious and with the defeat of the French, had gained new territory to become the foremost economic and military power on Earth.

British North America following the Seven Years' (French and Indian) War.

     Yet this prize did not come cheaply. The new imperial dominions needed maintaining and administering, and the American establishment alone – now including about half of the North American continent – became quite expensive to maintain, indeed. In the process of the war itself, Britain had gone into debt to pay for it, and now the new costs of the expanded empire were also being almost entirely shouldered by the British population in Britain itself.

     From here, Parliament enacted a series of laws designed to increase tax revenue from the colonies and to enforce parliamentary authority – most notably the Stamp Act of 1765, the Townshend Acts of 1767, and the Tea Act of 1773 – and it did so in the belief that it was only fair that colonists start sharing a greater deal of the costs of maintaining the Empire and the benefits it conferred. It also did so in the belief that Parliament was not just the supreme authority in Great Britain itself, but also throughout the whole British Empire, and that as such, it had the constitutional right to levy taxes and make laws anywhere throughout the Empire without impediments.

     This unlimited view of parliamentary authority without representation was not shared by the colonists, who saw the acts as being imposed from on high by a distant legislature across the Pond, where the colonies lacked representation and the ability to speak and act on the behalf of their own interests – hence the sentiment of having “taxation without representation.”

     Without parliamentary representation at Westminster, the colonists nevertheless believed that the British Constitution recognized fundamental rights – such as representative self-government – which Parliament could not ignore, even if it was the supreme authority throughout the Empire. The fact remained that it did not have representatives from the colonies on which it was imposing laws and was now in some cases riding roughshod over the assemblies and laws established by the colonists – going so far as to abolish them without the consent of people living there.

     In light of this, writers such as Thomas Jefferson, James Wilson, and Samuel Adams argued that without American representatives, Parliament was merely the legislature of Great Britain and that with legislatures of their own, the only thing connecting the colonies to the rest of the Empire was common allegiance to the Crown. Jefferson himself wrote in 1775 that: 

“there is not in the British empire a man who more cordially loves a union with Great Britain than I do. But, by the God that made me, I will cease to exist before I yield to a connection on such terms as the British Parliament propose; and in this, I think I speak the sentiments of America” 

     Those terms were the insistence on accepting parliamentary authority without representation in it, and the unwillingness to view colonial assemblies as having a legitimacy worthy of the constitutional and political traditions that led to their creation. 

     This was in short, Whig language being used against the British Parliament, which had first invented it.

     Many Americans wished to retain the links with the mother country, and certainly did not want a disruptive conflict, but the attempt at coercion by military force and occupation was in many ways, the last straw, and the rest is history.

     Since the outcome of the conflict which followed the battles of Lexington and Concord, America and Britain gradually become close friends and allies as America rose to global prominence alongside Britain, and both countries forged a Special Relationship rooted in the common bonds of language, history, culture, heritage, the rule of law, and democratic principles. Together, we have made mistakes, but when I think of us liberating the world from the forces of evil in Japan, Germany, and Italy – was well as the efforts to bring down the Soviets, and generally trying to help others, I believe we have done more good. 

Uncle Sam with his eagle and Britannia with her lion.

     On a personal level, Britain – now officially known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland – is my favorite country in the world outside of my own. 

     It started with an interest in the great ocean liners of the 19th and 20th centuries, and a great many of them happened to be British, such as the Queen Elizabeth 2, which was built at John Brown’s on the Clyde and remains a prime example of Britain at its best.

     From there, I immersed myself into learning about the monarchy, British history, the people of Britain, what the country is like today, British politics, and etc. All the while, I never thought of the United Kingdom as being divided according to the English, Welsh, Scots, and Northern Irish. For me, it has been one country made of different peoples with much in common, with the borders between then virtually meaningless.

     Indeed, what we think of today as Britishness has been brought about by the full and joint political, economic, and social union of these four nations into a single country, known as the United Kingdom. With the melding of these places, the idea of Britishness and Britain took hold, and each part has greatly contributed to that. Take any part out, and an essential part of the UK goes missing.

     When I hear songs like I Vow to Thee My Country, I think of the nation by which we have stood beside through decades of peace and war. When I listen to Heart of Oak, I think of great British ships that exported Britain around the world and helped to connect it. With Rule Britannia! and Land of Hope of Glory, I also think about the country that did so well at the 2012 Olympic Games by being united and which also celebrated the Diamond Jubilee of its storied Queen.

     I look at the vast expanse of Britain – from the Welsh valleys, to the green and pleasant land of England, to the Scottish Highlands, and Northern Ireland’s Giant’s Causeway and take wonder in the beauty of one land – indivisible. I look at the radiance of the UK’s great cities – from Glasgow to Manchester, Belfast to Inverness, from Aberdeen to Cardiff, Liverpool to Southampton, and from Birmingham to Edinburgh to London, and remain in awe of these places that are the engines of Britain’s prosperity.

     Yet for all of these great things, I am not at all blinded by visions of the United Kingdom as perfect country.

     There is poverty and economic suffering currently going on throughout the entire United Kingdom, for the downturn of recent years has caused pain for many people. I know that it is not entirely a land of hope and glory, but that does not mean that it cannot be.

     Britain has been – and is – a great country, and much of that greatness stems from the fact that it once governed the largest empire in human history. The British Empire is long gone, but positive influences from Britain around the world live on to the present day, and the UK is still a leader in world affairs. This is something in which the people ought to take some pride.

     It should also take pride in its cultural exports, such as James Bond, the Beatles, and Harry Potter – all of which hail from the land of Shakespeare and Burns. There are other contributions, like developing democracy and social welfare and leading the world in the industrial revolution, and still more, its venerable institutions such as the NHS, the monarchy, the BBC, Parliament, and the Armed Forces, all of which – in spite of their shortcomings – provide the glue that underpin British society and bind the British people together.

     I see all of these things, and I think to myself: what a wonderful country, this sceptered isle, or rather isles – these Isles of Wonder, which were so beautifully portrayed by Danny Boyle at the Olympics nearly three years ago.

The present-day United Kingdom (in green).

     I cannot help but to have admiration for what Britain has done in the past, and – as the 2012 Olympic Games themselves displayed – have hope for what Britain can do in the future, both at home and abroad.

     There are issues with Britain – many of them, and I sometimes wonder if the country is capable of solving them and surviving them. Among the issues are that of the drive by nationalists in Scotland attempting to break up Britain and end its very existence.

     Some of them will use the American example of independence as reason for their efforts. They talk of self-determination and need to be from under the yoke of Westminster, as though Scotland was an oppressed colony with absolutely no say in how Britain is governed, and in my time defending the UK, I have come across nationalists who are incredulous at the idea of Americans believing in keeping the UK together. Upon President Barack Obama’s comments in support of the UK last year, one newspaper columnist said that he could “remind an American president of what self-determination means in his tradition.”

     Well, an American president (and this American citizen) can say that we were inspired by self-determination coming from the British tradition of deciding their own affairs via sending representatives to Parliament to govern the country. In the present day, people in Scotland, England, Northern Ireland, and Wales exercise self-determination as British citizens at national, regional, and local levels of government, and the British government (with Scottish representation) affirmed this principle of self-determination when it gave the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh the power to hold a referendum on secession. 

     So no, we have not forgotten the meaning of self-determination. Scots already have it as British citizens. The secessionists just want to change it to self-determination as Scottish (but not British) citizens.

     It is also worth making a distinction between Scotland today and the American colonies of 1776, in addition to what has already been said in this post.

     Scotland is part of the country known as the United Kingdom, the country from which America declared independence. America was administratively part of Britain within a colonial context; it was part of Britain the empire, not Britain the country. If America had been sending representatives to Westminster to have a say on issues affecting the peoples living there, you could make the argument that America was part of Britain the country.

     But that was not the case. We were colonies of Britain, with no parliamentary representation, and that is why we fought under the banner of “no taxation without representation.” Scotland by contrast is not, and has never been a colony. It has been part of Britain the country, with parliamentary representation and a say at the top table, including Scots taking leading positions in government such as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Prime Minister for all of Britain.

     Today it seems as though Britain is fighting for its very existence. However, it has seen and been through worse times (i.e., World War II and the Blitz), and I believe it – and its people – will survive these trying times.

     From a solid foundation of hundreds of years, this country has much potential for a more dynamic, hopeful, and united future together.

     There is nothing wrong with Britain that cannot be righted by what’s good about Britain – nothing wrong with Britain that cannot be fixed by the British people as a whole from Shetland to Lands End.

     It is my hope as an American celebrating Independence Day that Britain remains together (and can celebrate a Union or Britain Day), just as we remained together after our bloody Civil War, and have remained ever since, and that the Special Relationship between us shall endure.

My performance of My Country, Tis of Thee/God Save the Queen in celebration of America and Britain.