Beautiful Virgin Islands

Wednesday, Oct 08, 2025

Britain Is Holding Its Breath

Britain Is Holding Its Breath

The results of the U.S. election will pose existential questions in London.
It is that time again, when the world outside the United States stops, when we foreigners hold our collective breath and look up from our own domestic concerns to discover whom the citizens of America have chosen as their new Caesar—and ours.

The outcome has always mattered, and mattered enormously, but has rarely affected an American ally’s core strategy: The U.S. was simply too important, its foreign policy too settled, for any other country’s policies to be tied to one particular candidate. A leader of a European state might dislike or disapprove of an American presidential hopeful’s politics, philosophy, or temperament, but this did not usually swell into fears about the fundamental interests of the state itself.

Ronald Reagan’s election was beneficial to Margaret Thatcher, but a Jimmy Carter victory would’ve been fine for Britain. Barack Obama’s election was welcomed by most in Europe, but John McCain was perfectly acceptable. Even George W. Bush’s victory in 2000 was not existential. (Perhaps the one exception to this rule is the 1940 election of Franklin D. Roosevelt, upon whose shoulders Winston Churchill rested many of his hopes—and the free world’s. But even in that case, Roosevelt’s opponent, Wendell Willkie, was very pro-British, and FDR ultimately used him as an informal envoy to London in 1941.)

This rule no longer holds. For weeks, if not months, the angst of the British establishment has dripped onto the pages of its national newspapers and magazines. Boris Johnson’s government is panicking about a Joe Biden victory, one report says; the claim is then quickly dismissed in another outlet, which points out that the prime minister certainly wants a Democratic victory.

The arguments and briefings go round and round. On the one hand, Britain needs Donald Trump’s support for a post-Brexit trade deal, we read—something a Democrat-controlled White House and Congress are unlikely to prioritize. But on the other hand, we’re told that this is nonsense and that of course Johnson’s government favors a Biden win, because Trump threatens everything the British government holds dear, especially after Brexit, whether that be NATO, global trade, the United Nations, environmental protections, or the Iranian nuclear deal.

Whatever the merits of these claims and counterclaims, the important point for Britain is that it is no longer simply an interested outsider observing the American democratic process, but a co-opted combatant whose national interests appear to be on the line. Suddenly, its political characters are onstage introducing Trump at rallies, while its prime minister is a bogeyman of one party—a name to drop into sound bites to signal distaste.

Britain’s current government risks joining Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel in aligning with one party, which means that the opposition aligns with the other. Not only has American politics changed, but the ferocity of this change has dragged other countries into the drama.

Britain’s security and economy are so closely tied to its special relationship with the U.S. that the election poses particularly difficult questions. How, for example, can Britain develop a security strategy if it cannot rely on American support for NATO? How can it design a trade strategy outside the European Union if it does not know whether the U.S. will support free trade, the World Trade Organization, or the idea of an agreement with Britain from one presidency to the next?

This leads to a truly existential question for Britain: If the potential election of Biden—the most centrist, cautious, trans-Atlantic, status quo candidate imaginable—causes apparent soul-searching in London, then perhaps the problem lies not with America, but closer to home. Indeed, if the election of one president or another is an existential challenge, then perhaps the issue is Britain’s strategy itself.

If Britain’s global trade policy is dependent on reaching a deal with the U.S., then is that strategy wise to begin with? If Britain’s national defense relies on an America that is now stretched and resentful of its burden, is this sensible either?

To ask such questions invites an even deeper discussion about the very nature of what Britain wants to achieve with its foreign policy. For example, it has long been taken for granted that Britain should seek to maximize its influence in Washington.

But few officials or advocates in London ask: to what end? We are told we must invest in our military to protect our standing in America. But again, to what purpose? Will spending more than Germany on defense mean that Biden visits London ahead of Berlin, or gives Britain preferential treatment on trade or, well, anything?

If no, then why spend the money? Does the British national interest require sending warships through the South China Sea? Does Japan suffer by not sending ships to the North Sea? Does Germany suffer by doing almost nothing, by comparison, for international defense?

In the end, all these challenges reveal the essential question that lurks underneath: What kind of country does Britain seek to be? This question may well have been prompted by the U.S. election, but it is not for Biden or Trump to answer.

In January 1961, John F. Kennedy gave his inauguration address. “Let the word go forth from this time and place,” he declared, “that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans.” But this new generation did not have fundamentally different ideals, he said.

They would “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” Such promises, of course, led to Vietnam and a changed America that today offers few of these assurances.

Kennedy ended his speech with the appeal for which it is now famous: “Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.” Yet a subsequent appeal, not as well known today, was added for the citizens of the world: “Ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.”

Perhaps Britain, like the other countries of the American alliance, must follow this advice 60 years on, even if it’s for the less grandiose goal of its own freedom rather than that of mankind.
Newsletter

Related Articles

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
France: Less Than a Month After His Appointment, the New French Prime Minister Resigns
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated that Hungary will not adopt the euro because the European Union is falling apart.
Sarah Mullally Becomes First Woman Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury
Mayor in western Germany in intensive care after stabbing
Australian government pays Deloitte nearly half a million dollars for a report built on fabricated quotes, fake citations, and AI-generated nonsense.
US Prosecutors Gained Legal Approval to Hack Telegram Servers
Macron Faces Intensifying Pressure to Resign or Trigger New Elections Amid France’s Political Turmoil
Standard Chartered Names Roberto Hoornweg as Sole Head of Corporate & Investment Banking
UK Asylum Housing Firm Faces Backlash Over £187 Million Profits and Poor Living Conditions
UK Police Crack Major Gang in Smuggling of up to 40,000 Stolen Phones to China
BYD’s UK Sales Soar Nearly Nine-Fold, Making Britain Its Biggest Market Outside China
Trump Proposes Farm Bailout from Tariff Revenues Amid Backlash from Other Industries
FIFA Accuses Malaysia of Forging Citizenship Documents, Suspends Seven Footballers
Latvia to Bar Tourist and Occasional Buses to Russia and Belarus Until 2026
A Dollar Coin Featuring Trump’s Portrait Expected to Be Issued Next Year
Australia Orders X to Block Murder Videos, Citing Online Safety and Public Exposure
Three Scientists Awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine for Discovery of Immune Self-Tolerance Mechanism
OpenAI and AMD Forge Landmark AI-Chip Alliance with Equity Option
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
×