THEY'RE JUST NOT THAT INTO YOU

BRITISH ELITES AND THEIR UNREQUITED LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE USA

Thoughts and prayers with the hundreds of BBC journalists now called home to the day job after the US election.  The BBC typically sends a couple of hundred staff to US party conventions, at which neither they nor any of their viewers have a vote, and follow up by fanning out all over the country.  American interviewees respond with unfailing courtesy, but must be wondering what on earth all of these people are doing there.    

Why are UK elites so obsessed with the USA? After every US election, the media is preoccupied by whether the PM manages to get the first word in with the new President, right down to how many minutes the call was.  It’s not easy to forget the image of Gordon Brown pursuing an obviously indifferent Obama to secure a key meeting in a New York kitchen

In 1986, US bombers, flying from bases in the UK, struck targets in Libya in retaliation for Colonel Gadaffi’s sponsorship of terrorist attacks against American and Western targets.    Mrs Thatcher authorised the use of airbases in the UK, and strongly supported the action.  Most European leaders were neutral or opposed, with France refusing the use of their airspace.    In the immediate aftermath of these attacks, polling across Europe came up with some interesting findings.  In the UK, public opinion was strongly opposed, with 66% against.   In France, by contrast, 61% supported the bombing. 

This was the first time I noticed the way the gap between elite and popular views of the US in the UK and Europe was inverted.   In the UK the elite is more favourable towards the US than the wider population; in France and other European countries it is the other way round.    

An early-1990s study of the British foreign policy elite found that 80% perceived that there was a special relationship – just 5% said Britain had never enjoyed such a relationship; moreover, 91% agreed that the transatlantic connection was crucial or very important to the UK’s international role and interests. A YouGov poll conducted in 2016 showed that 57% of opinion-formers maintained there was still a special relationship, while 37% held the opposite view (only 5% said there had never been such a relationship).

All over the UK system there is evidence of this ‘cultural cringe’ towards America.  The renaming of the Appellate Judicial Committee of the Privy Council the ‘Supreme Court’¹.  Hitherto unknown Whitehall posts like the ‘National Security Advisor’ and renaming parts of the Home Office ‘Homeland Security’. 

There are obviously deep historical reasons for the closeness of the relationship at the highest political and strategic levels.  The British elite was under no illusion about the decline in British power from WW2 onwards.  The response to this was to get as close to the rising power as possible to retain influence that way.  As Kissinger commented wryly

De Gaulle frequently behaved obstreperously in order to make ignoring him painful; Macmillan made it so easy for the United States to solicit Britain’s views that ignoring him would have been embarrassing

This approach has percolated through the entire foreign policy and defence establishment.  It is, moreover, constantly reinforced by day to day relationships, practices and the ambitions of participants.

The military is obviously integrated into the NATO command.  The intelligence agencies have exceptionally close working relationships through the Five Eyes system.  A favourable opinion from US partners can only help an individual’s career aspirations.

The US puts a certain amount of effort into fostering these links.  Exchange and visiting programmes like the State Department Visitors Programme given opinion formers in allied countries the opportunity to visit the US and meet counterparts in their fields.  I attended one of these in the 2000s, and fellow visitors from the new NATO countries in Eastern Europe were intrigued whether this was the opening move towards an approach to spy for the US.  Our delightful State Department hosts demurred.  In practice of course, having received the favour of such an agreeable few weeks, it is hard not to be influenced in a more positive direction simply through the normal human instinct of reciprocity.    

Concentrating on the ‘deep state’ links in this way can give rise to all sorts of conspiracy theories.  References to CIA sponsoring highbrow magazines like Encounter, or even the idea the CIA was engaged in sponsoring the occasional deep asset in the British establishment, as in Robert Harris’ book ‘The Ghost’. 

In reality, the links are much more broadly spread across the elite class, and explicable much more in terms of personal self interest.

Large industries like defence are strongly internationally integrated, with a heavy dependency on US orders.  The tech sector has important bases in the UK but here too usually subsidiary to or tightly integrated with US parents.   The financial sector in London is thriving, but, like Wimbledon, the UK tends to provide the courts and the strawberries and only rarely the players. 

There are hardly any industries in the UK that are truly autonomous from US rivals, and potentially in competition – perhaps the law is the best example, successfully outcompeting US common law jurisdictions to dominate international commercial law.

Similar drivers appear in the policy and academic spaces.  The big money is in US academia, with jobs, conference invites and publications dominated by the US market, as well as the whole peer review and impact processes.  This explains bizarre phenomena like Cambridge University Press renaming one of its journals to remove the word Anglo Saxon, pandering to the sensitivies of progressive US academics.

Think tanks in the US have a budget that vastly exceeds those of their UK counterparts, leading to a corresponding outsize influence. 

The same incentives apply in the creative sectors.  Ever since the 1960s  ‘breaking the US’  has been the ultimate aspiration for UK bands.    Given the common language, it is striking how quickly the US audience becomes an important factor for all kinds of writers.  You can see this in existing outfits like the Daily Mail, that has a huge US market.  Also in successful new players like the Triggernometry podcast and Unherd magazine, both of which within a few years probably have majority US readership, and in the latter case have built up a whole US arm as a result.   I was surprised how quickly even my modest starter substack built a substantial proportion of its readership in the states, with half of all new subscribers from the USA within the first few months.  

This means that opinion formers are used from the beginning to taking account of the interests and priorities of US readers, and naturally reach for US precedents. This arguably distracts from developments in Europe which face more similar economic and social challenges to the UK, and in the old commonwealth countries like Canada and Australia, whose more similar history and constitutional framework also makes them are more relevant comparator.    

This is very different perhaps in continental countries.  While there have been many outstanding examples of European businessmen leading global organisations, the risk of language and cultural mismatch is likely to make integration with US rivals seem less attractive.  On the defence and military side, lower levels of US trust and confidence limits the scope for gains through cooperation. 

On the intellectual side too, seeing ones own bad post modern ideas coming back from the US into Europe debased even further is no consolation for the recognition that French or Italian thinkers are likely to struggle to find a place for themselves in what is a largely Anglo discourse.  This makes it entirely rational for elite players in Europe to stress strategic autonomy and distance in their own interests. 

This preoccupation with the US relationship is not obviously shared by the wider population, however.  Pew research shows Britain in the middle of the pack – even relatively unenthusiastic about the US compared to many other countries.  The UK, like most European countries, is highly partisan about US politics, with overwhelming preference for Democrat presidents.  This is slightly less pronounced than some countries, however, so the UK’s level of enthusiasm dropped relatively during the Obama presidency, for example. 

Support for the USA in the UK appears to be positively correlated with levels of education, with 51% of those with a degree or higher having a favourable view of the US, compared to 43% of those without.  I have not been able to find French or German polling by social background – I’d love to see some if readers can point me to it.

By contrast, the vast majority of British people have positive feelings towards Americans but see no likely personal gain from close relations, creating perhaps a usefully dispassionate approach to the US’ strengths and weaknesses.  Given that Trump has been elected on a clear ‘America First’ platform, diluting elite obsessions with some of the wider public’s broader scepticism could be useful.    As an American friend once joked to me “the difference between Americans and Canadians is that Americans don’t care what the difference between Americans and Canadians is”.  

1. with thanks to SL for pointing out this error