He was not sneering at British imitativeness, but was disappointed that so many aspects of life in Britain – political, economic, cultural and psychological – mirrored, often in a distorted form, what had already happened in the US. This distortion was inevitable simply because what worked in the US seldom did so in a very different country like the UK.
For instance, Nigel Farage plans to save money by sacking diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) staff on impoverished or bankrupt local councils, telling them “to seek alternative careers”. American culture clashes, for the most part about race, do not automatically resonate here, though the 1 May elections results show that this may be changing.
After the general election last year, I wrote that the new Government might have a few years to show that they could change voters’ lives for the better, but, if they failed, voters might not give the traditional parties another chance. In the event, Labour has managed to discredit itself in a few months. Sir Keir Starmer and Labour are now being blamed for their bungled tactics and strategy.
The economic failure today may not be as great as in the Great Depression in the 1930s, but in one important respect the situation is graver because – unlike the 1930s when there was a Keynesian alternative economic model – nobody today knows what to put in the place of the old system. This is true of governments, but it is also true of populists of both left and right.
The cost of these successes was progressively greater reliance on Washington which in realpolitik terms was the only sensible policy. After the debacle of the British and French attack on Egypt in the Suez Crisis in 1956, the British were determined to get closer to the US, and the French looked to the rest of Europe.
The essential factor in Britain’s survival
Riding on the coat-tails of American hegemony worked out well for Britain until the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Wishful thinkers in London could still dismiss the President as a blip in US history whose importance should not be exaggerated.
Since 1700, Britain has had a powerful state machine enabling it to compete successfully with its continental rivals. Thatcher believed in a small state whose essential utilities were sold off and state functions privatised. There was a systematic Americanisation of the British system of government that has now become a recipe for long-term decline.
As a correspondent in Washington, I noticed that incoming British journalists, who would certainly have studied Russian history had they been posted to Moscow, felt no need to do so before arriving in the US because they instinctively felt that Americans were much like themselves.
Scapegoats for failure
The US may have the human and material resources to survive the greatest challenge to its existence as a liberal democracy since the US Civil War. Many of the same social and economic forces that propelled the rise of Trump have already produced Brexit in Britain.
My first job in journalism was working in a very junior capacity for the great investigative journalist Paul Foot at Private Eye. I had just left school in Scotland and floundered, since Paul cheerfully took it for granted that I was capable of investigating the dodgy doings of people whom I had previously never heard of before.
A further reason for going to the awards is that all the finalists have carried out important investigations, many of which I have never heard of. Since I follow the news carefully, I am always rather taken aback by important stories that I have somehow managed to miss, as well as real scoops that the rest of the media is ignoring.
All the finalists for the Paul Foot Awards in 2025 had done significant work, but the one that gripped me most is the extraordinary story of how the UK government has ignored overwhelming evidence of mass lead poisoning, in much the same way that it once downplayed asbestosis as a threat.
Those under the age of six are particularly vulnerable as they ingest more of the lead than adults. The symptoms are often unrecognised because the health authorities in the UK – unlike the US and many other countries – make little effort to warn people about the danger posed by lead and to carry out widespread testing.
Hughes found, on the contrary, that water leaches out of some 6,500 abandoned lead mines all over the UK, poisoning water sources and soil, affecting farm animals and poultry – so eggs are often dangerously contaminated. In a country with an old housing stock, buildings often have paint with lead in it on the walls which produces toxic, lead-laced dust.
Under the Radar
A friend from West Belfast surprised me by saying that she was certain that sectarian hatred between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland is greater today than it was during The Troubles. When I asked her why this was, she attributed it primarily to enduring Protestant anger at losing their former supremacy.
The main Protestant parties in Northern Ireland are not so different from Reform. As with Brexit, radical policies that rock the political boat in the rest of the UK may well capsize it in Northern Ireland.
Cockburn’s Pick
The most cogent account of the chances of an end to the Ukraine war is an interview by UnHerd with George Beebe, former head of Russian analysis at the CIA and now at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
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