Voting Tomorrow—In The United Kingdom

For John, BLUF:  And, they are still a testing lab of democracy.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

---

From the Brookings Institution, down in DC, we have a report from Mr Jeremy Shapiro on the elections in the United Kingdom tomorrow "Little England: Why the British election matters to the United States"

Foreign elections don’t get a lot of attention in the United States.  These days, particularly, we are a bit caught up in our own imminent presidential election—it is a mere 18 months away.  And, honestly, from an American perspective, such elections tend to feature poor production values, mind-numbingly substantive debates, and endless banging on about pensions, health care, and other extremely parochial issues.  But on May 7, there is an election in the United Kingdom that might just merit putting aside that latest exposé on Hillary Clinton’s hairstyle.

Why is the British election worth diverting ourselves from such weighty issues? Well, first, it’s in English (more or less) which makes it at least plausibly comprehensible for interested Americans.  But perhaps more importantly, the British election will have important implications for the United States and may well be a harbinger of things to come.

The United Kingdom (U.K.) has long been the United States’ most stalwart and visible ally.  Indeed, more than an ally, the United Kingdom became, in foreign policy terms, a sanity check. In the halcyon days of Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, the U.K. was the first place American policymakers went to understand how U.S. foreign policy would be received beyond their shores.

The U.K. was never an American poodle, but it was fair to say that if you couldn’t sell a policy in Britain, it was unlikely to do well in France, India, or China.  The U.K. was America’s most sympathetic critic, its most willing collaborator, and its most able partner.  Indeed, it was the only large country in the European Union that maintained its defense spending at 2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) as all NATO members are supposed to do.

Frankly, we owe the UK a lot.  We are who we are because of England.  We also owe Germany and Ireland, and Mexico, and France (Louisiana Purchase and immigrants from Canada), and the West Coast of Africa, but it is England that shared with us the Magna Carta and the Common Law and the "rights of Englishmen" and the idea of little shop keepers, and who, 85 years ago, held the line for us against a distorted and corrupted Germany, until we could get our act together.

I don't care who you are or where you come from, what the color of your skin and your sexual orientation, they are our British Cousins and they should matter to us.

Regards  —  Cliff