I live outside the UK now. I grew up nestled in Brittania's bosom and understand it rather better than you imagine.
you can't possibly understand
Even if I was an outsider, why not? Everyone has deep feelings about their own country, culture, history and so on. Don't you think it's a little silly to imagine a country is simply beyond understanding by anyone else? Certainly outsiders have a different relationship insofar as they didn't grow up listening to smack of leather-wrapped balls on cricket bats or [insert distinctive national trope here], but so what? Lacking experience of other cultures never deterred the British from opining about and sometimes taking them over during the age of exploration. If anything, their ability to understand the dynamics of other countries was a major factor in becoming an imperial power in the first place.
UK system is sublime and built on subtlety and nuance
That's just a flowery way to say you like how things have always worked and have a good grasp of unwritten rules. It's equally applicable to the Catholic church or Kalahari bush society.
people who don't fully understand it underestimate it
Americans think the same thing about their Constitution, and this has a lot to do with why the country nowadays lurches from one crisis to the next, failed to anticipate the possibility of a coup attempt 2 years ago, and still hasn't got to grips with it as a polity, despite having successfully prosecuted a number of people for sedition.
I recall 10-15 years ago where when I first became convinced that the US had some serious structural problems and was headed toward acute domestic conflict, academic/legal friends would just go misty -eyed and say nice things about constitutional checks and balances and the wisdom of the founders. If had been sufficiently prescient or had a time machine to say 'by 2021 you'll have civil unrest all over the country and a mob of Donald Trump supporters will force their way into Congress to prevent the transfer of power' they would have laughed out loud or summoned an ambulance.
If you are from US, then you might as well because present UK at least seems less imperialistic. However, this could be simply because it wields less power than it did in past centuries.
The British fascination with America is indeed quite fascinating.
I think Britain recently even decided to get a Supreme Court. You have British politicians now talking about the independence of the judiciary* and other philosophical ideas that are present frequently in American discourse but I guess is new for Britain now that they recently got an independent Supreme Court.
*This, by the way, happened in a Prime Minister's Questions thing a few years ago. Jeremy Corbyn asked PM Theresa May if she would respect the "independence of the judiciary" regarding some UK Supreme Court ruling and PM May said she would.
I was born and raised in the US and I don't think I've ever met someone who has any sort of complex about the British Empire, or who would be any more insulted by "you should be ruled by the Queen" than "you should be ruled by the President of Uruguay" (or any other random country). The US was last part of the British Empire before most of our ancestors came to this country.
Honestly your comment, assuming it is meant to be taken seriously, strikes me as bizarre, and I suspect you're misinterpreting your American friends' reactions.
Like many external observers I'm astonished at how many Americans take their position for granted.
This is a list of things that can go away in a heartbeat. Someone living in Victorian England couldn't possibly imagine a world where Britain wasn't at the absolute centre and on in charge of everything, yet within two generations that power had all but faded.
Yes I was, but that was just a part of it. The "United Kingdom" is huge. It's hard for me to imagine, for example, how Australians are still owned and controlled by that Monarchy.
In practice it's not much different here since we still have the military draft but so far we can still fire a "President" via impeachment if they go crazy on us. The UK's "subjects" do not have that power, they are truly akin to chattel.
British people will also tell you they have good food, a working healthcare system, and that people care about their monarchy, but you don't have to listen to them about any of it. We're just humoring them.
To have a constitutional government, you should first have a constitution.
I love to clown on Brit’s over their government. Every time I read about the current UK I’m even more happy for the events of 1776 and 1787.
There’s a reason that the UK is slowly losing its 1st world nation status. Self inflicted wounds due to among other things a people who want a nany state. Reap what you sow.
I'm British. Thanks to my passport and digital nomading I have spent the last 4 years travelling the world. In that time I have gone from thinking of Britain being a relatively normal country (did some bad things in history, but made significant contributions too), to seeing it in the same league as the countries we were taught to despise in school.
I am perhaps a good case study of the shift in thinking that so-called "Winners" need to take. The facts of Britain's (and the rest of the Western World's) history are plain to see. Say in Wikipedia for example, for sure there's bias, but African slavery, Native American decimation, the Opium Wars, the Bengali Famine, the theft of "Commonwealth", to name but a few, are all there. It's that there's simply no impetus to feel any of this, nobody has the power to force us to truly contemplate what we've done, because Britain and its ilk are at the top of the power pyramid.
But travelling suddenly makes all of this personal. "Made in China" takes such a more deeper meaning when you literally made friends with them in their own land. I just can't get so angry about Indian email scammers when I've probably met them or their family and learnt that our Queen wears their precious jewels in her crown like an evil, unfeeling, global bully.
I made these shifts relatively easily, because like most Western people, I have a heart and perhaps ironically I was taught in school to make judgements based on facts. But I needed to be unrooted from my native context, that is just not going to happen on a large enough scale. What if the actual more fundamental problem raised by the Climate Emergency is this large-scale switch in context? What if we put our energy into that instead of reducing C02? Of course that'll never happen, it's chicken and egg, the motivation doesn't come until you understand the bigger picture. What's more the climate serves as a convenient foil for avoiding the existential sea-change by giving us an all too logistical problem to face instead.
I'm glad to see this article on the front page. There is some progress. There are indeed significant seams of Western society which accept such self criticism. Even though most of us did not knowingly cause the damage, we are the only people that can meaningfully take responsibility. It's not fair, but that's the path ahead.
I get it’s UK and may be the most influential western country in the last 200-300 years. But time goes on, countries evolve and often they do so in unexpected ways. My argument is that, at some point we must detach a country from its past (whatever that means) and accept the direction its constituents are now wanting to take. Even if we personally don’t approve of said direction.
There are some in the UK (and some of them write for the Telegraph) who have yet to realise Britain's supremacy is over (as the article notes, that was over a century ago).
I'm sorry, I don't follow. You're comparing 19th century imperial Britain with 21st century America? A country headed by an African American, progressive pro-international community President?
Whether UK and Commonwealth citizens across the globe really want ceremonal proclamations of accession or not is moot -- they don't get a choice. This is the point. It's a bizarre anachronism that serves as a reminder of the class system, and our places within it.
Sorry, I know "power alliances" wasn't too clear, but it was just a way to stress that these are in effect temporary, shifting alliances between powerful organisations (such as nation states are).
> For my part, I think the relationship is based on a general understanding that their people are alike in custom, beliefs, traditions, geopolitical place, etc
Yes, and this is what I was sceptical about. Just to give a few examples, the UK society is extremely secularised, with more than 50% of the population declaring itself non religious; nobody thinks it's a right to carry firearms; police itself is mostly unarmed; politically, there's a strong labour party that is way to the left than the US political mainstream, a welfare state and universal social security and health care. The demographic composition is much more homogeneous than that of the US, with a large indigenous population and relatively recent immigration. There is a lot of value put on tradition, social classes and social order. There is a hereditary aristocracy that holds reserved seats in a branch of the parliament. Etc.
> After all, America is the troubled child of the UK
Yes, and they share a language. But the US is an entirely different place: a whole continent with deserts, mountain ranges, tropical beaches and freezing wilderness. A huge amount of space that for centuries has attracted immigrants from all over Europe and the world; the US culture is a mix of many conflicting cultures released in a colonial setting where conquering and settling was for centuries the way forward.
Imo, the relationship of the US with the UK is mostly sentimental, while that of the UK with the US is one of subalternity.
As an outsider, but generally appreciative of British culture's influence on me, I was (and continue to be) flabbergasted with Britain's inward outlook.
For the vast majority of British history, Brits were only wealthy when they traded outside. The trade took various forms such as East India company, trading outposts, industrial trade outside the island, colonization, financial capitalization etc. Britain ruled the seas (and still does behind America), and established English as the lingua franca of world business.
Yet, people keep voting for inwardness. Brexit, tax cuts for the rich, stopping skilled/semi-skilled immigration. This is completely and astonishingly backwards.
The only way Britain survives the competitive world is by trading more and making itself a hub of education, engineering, finance and global businesses. Constantly voting for restrictive trade, restrictive borders and disconnect from the rest of the world takes Britain closer to North Korea than to USA, China, Singapore, Australia, Canada - who are all trying to forge more relationships with the world.
You can downvote me and make it seem like I'm an idiot who doesn't know any better, but again, I doubt you'll understand how the majority of the world feels. I'm from a former British colony, and if you're from one let's talk. If not, good day.
If you think USA is actually trying to bring democracy, then its not me who is naive. Democracy is not the only way. Just because an outsider drew and created a border and calling it a nation doesn't make it a country.
Colonialism was just taking away other people's resources and treating those people like shit while at it. If UK would have created institutions for welfare and development of people and treated them on par with their citizens, then as those people see that as a step closer to better living than as some foreigners that were killing their own, there wouldn't have been any freedom movements and UK would have been biggest country on earth. Am not blaiming anyone. Just trying to point out that nothing good comes out of violence. If we take away the power to kill other person, then eventually they will find a way to live alongside eachother. With a gun you can kill someone in just one second. If there were no gun and no advanced training in killing, then killing becomes messy and bloody and there wont be as many killings.
>You have again gross misconception about "people", "nations" and various other concepts that simply do not exist in major parts of the world.
I do not have any such misconceptions. You can't meddle and force them to live your way at flip of a button. Tribes have their own form of government. Some are good. As long as they are not isolated, they will evolve to better forms of governing. It may take some time, but it eventually they will discover a better form of government and gradually implement it. Take UK for example. They were just normal humans like anyone else. No outsider brought democracy to UK. If it were bought to them forcefully by outsider by overthrowing their king/queen, and throwing away all government structures UK had at that point, and then install someone else as their new head, then UK too would be a bloody mess like libya or syria
I disagree with the assertion that the UK has been an empire of any kind since roughly the end of World War II. I agree in part with the article's core assertion, that the UK's days as a major influence on the global political and financial stages are now over.
However, I think this has been a gradual process. I think it has to do less with an internal dissolution of British society's pillars (though I think that is happening), and more with a lack of understanding of just what kind of weight Britain has to throw around. Put simply: Britain is not as important as it thinks it is, and the EU is much more important than people think it is. Britain needs the EU more than the EU needs it.
That's not an easy thing to accept. Who among us wants to be told "you don't matter like you think you do?" Imagine an American's reaction to being told that.
But it's a lesson the UK needs to learn, and fast, if it's to keep its economy and quality of life.
you can't possibly understand
Even if I was an outsider, why not? Everyone has deep feelings about their own country, culture, history and so on. Don't you think it's a little silly to imagine a country is simply beyond understanding by anyone else? Certainly outsiders have a different relationship insofar as they didn't grow up listening to smack of leather-wrapped balls on cricket bats or [insert distinctive national trope here], but so what? Lacking experience of other cultures never deterred the British from opining about and sometimes taking them over during the age of exploration. If anything, their ability to understand the dynamics of other countries was a major factor in becoming an imperial power in the first place.
UK system is sublime and built on subtlety and nuance
That's just a flowery way to say you like how things have always worked and have a good grasp of unwritten rules. It's equally applicable to the Catholic church or Kalahari bush society.
people who don't fully understand it underestimate it
Americans think the same thing about their Constitution, and this has a lot to do with why the country nowadays lurches from one crisis to the next, failed to anticipate the possibility of a coup attempt 2 years ago, and still hasn't got to grips with it as a polity, despite having successfully prosecuted a number of people for sedition.
I recall 10-15 years ago where when I first became convinced that the US had some serious structural problems and was headed toward acute domestic conflict, academic/legal friends would just go misty -eyed and say nice things about constitutional checks and balances and the wisdom of the founders. If had been sufficiently prescient or had a time machine to say 'by 2021 you'll have civil unrest all over the country and a mob of Donald Trump supporters will force their way into Congress to prevent the transfer of power' they would have laughed out loud or summoned an ambulance.
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