Recently we have passed the first anniversary of the marriage of Prince William to his long time girlfriend Kate. With their anniversary plans kept strictly under wraps, a White House spokesman was quick to stress they wouldn't emulate Juan Carlos of Spain by jet-setting. After all, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and British America has so much to offer, why bother going abroad?
And to think it all could have been so different. Hidden away in the depths of the National Archives in Georgetown, far from the publicly displayed Magna Carta, Emancipation Act and our copy of the United Nations Charter, is a little known document which could have torn the country apart. Found amongst the private papers of Thomas Jefferson, a Virginian lawyer who would later become Governor of British America between 1801 and 1809, was a detailed legal statement declaring the separation of the Thirteen Colonies from the Crown. Historians have argued ever since the document was found in the 1980s whether it is genuine. Even if if is, it doesn't matter. By the time the Second Continental Congress met in June 1775, Lord North, the Prime Minister in London, had displayed the political nous which would serve him well in the Taxation Crisis. Having cunningly driven dissent to the brink, bizarrely this made it easier for him to back down, and in April 1775 he ordered the British army to cease raids on the arms depots of the rebels. Deprived of an atmosphere of crisis, the Congress merely settled for improved tax trade rights, and the guarantee of political representation in the future.
The preservation of this large economic powerhouse helped to make Britain into the major global superpower which she is today. The agreement between Governor James Madison and Lord Liverpool in 1812, which freed the Continental Army for use against Napoleon in exchange for American MPs in London, proved to be crucial, for it allowed the rapidly expanding population of British America to wield real power. However, the resultant rebellion over the abolition of slavery this also entailed left a lasting scar on the south of British America. But this aside, the two cultures found they had a lot in common. Soon American politicians began to make themselves known in Parliament; Andrew Jackson was a key player in the drive of Earl Grey to force through the Great Reform Act of 1832, which massively extended the franchise across the UK, while the decision of Abraham Lincoln to switch from backing the Liberals to the Conservatives swept Benjamin Disraeli into power.
And then it happened. In 1900, the Conservative party chose Teddy Roosevelt, MP for New York, Manhattan over Arthur Balfour, the MP for Manchester East as its leader and new Prime Minister. The axis of power had now well and truly shifted. When Roosevelt was defeated in the Liberal landslide of 1906, it was to another American, Woodrow Wilson, MP for Princeton, NJ. Under Wilson, the power of the House of Lords was severly curtailed by the Parliament Act 1911, and this was also when Parliament itself moved to Georgetown on a permanent basis. From now, the only Prime Ministers for British seats would be David Lloyd George, who ousted Wilson in 1916 due to difficulties during the First World War, and FDR's long standing deputy Clement Attlee, who stepped in when FDR died in 1945 and finished the construction of the welfare state which the Democratic Labour Party had been building since 1933. The decision of Edward VII to spend most of his time in America meant that even the Royal Family had moved on, replacing Balmoral for Camp David (named for Edward's eldest grandson, who briefly ruled as Edward VIII).
Some native Britons still made an impact on the national stage. Winston Churchill's decision to join FDR's National Government in 1940 as Minister for War is credited as the best military decision FDR ever made, while Harold Wilson served as a brilliant Chancellor of the Exchequer for Bobby Kennedy. Few will ever forget the close relationship between Ronald Reagan and the contemporary Governor of Britain, Margaret Thatcher, or that between Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Tony Blair.
But despite big names such as these, Britain slowly became a backwater, with all the high politics, culture and drama taking place in British America. After all, across the water they had Macdonalds, Hollywood and much more money. Although the Prime Minister had to retain an interest in Britain during the Cold War, after 1989 it was hard to remain focused. And so, a trend which began in the year that Richard Nixon's Tories ousted Bobby Kennedy from Number One Observatory Circle passed almost unnoticed. For it was in that year that the United Kingdom Independence Party gained its first seats in Parliament. Formed in 1968 by Conservative dissident Enoch Powell, it gradually built up support under various defectors from both the Tories and Dem Labs. In 2010 it took almost half the vote in mainland Britain, and their charismatic leader trounced both Stephen Harper and Paul Martin in the TV debates. In 2012 their candidate for Governor of Britain, David Miliband, is expected to sweep into office by a landslide, and whoever wins the 2014 general election, be it the Tories again under Stephen Harper or Democratic Labour under charismatic new leader Barack Obama, will doubtless have to tangle with UKIP's William Hague over keeping Britain in the Union.
Prime Ministers, 1900-2012
1900-1906- Theodore Roosevelt (Conservative)
1906-1916- Woodrow Wilson (Liberal)
1916-1922- David Lloyd George (Liberal)
1922-1933- Calvin Coolidge (Conservative)
1933-1945- Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Democratic Labour)
1945-1951- Clement Attlee (Democratic Labour)
1951-1963- Dwight D. Eisenhower (Conservative)
1963-1964- John Dienfenbaker (Conservative)
1964-1970- Robert Kennedy (Democratic Labour)
1970-1974- Richard Nixon (Conservative)
1974-1979- Pierre Trudeau (Democratic Labour)
1979-1990- Ronald Reagan (Conservative)
1990-1997- Brian Mulroney (Conservative)
1997-2007- Bill Clinton (Democratic Labour)
2007-2010- Paul Martin (Democratic Labour)
2010-2012- Stephen Harper (Conservative)
UKIP Leaders, 1968-2012
1968-1975- Enoch Powell
1975-1979- Edward Heath
1979-1987- Shirley Williams
1987-1994- John Smith
1994-1997- Malcolm Rifkind
1997-2005- David Davis
2005-2012- William Hague
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