My wife and I recently celebrated our wedding anniversary in the United Kingdom (UK), otherwise known as Great Britain. We love London and the Cotswolds, the Channel coast and Devonshire, where both our families trace back their origins. We freely acknowledge that we go there to commune with the Great Britain of history more than its troubled current state. This is expressed in where we make our base in London, the Royal Horseguards Hotel, founded in 1884. Located on the Thames just across from the famous “Eye” Ferris wheel, Number 10, Parliament, the Ministry of Defense, Trafalgar Square, Big Ben, and the National Gallery are all within walking distance. But the hotel’s name comes from being only a block away from the Household Cavalry barracks and museum, which is a great place to watch the start or end of the famous changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace.
Read more Public Execution is Public Law. Public Law Requires Public Witness.
Hanging in the lobby with its comfy chairs and fireplace is a large print of Lady Butler’s famous painting of the Royal Scots Greys charging at Waterloo. Titled “Scotland Forever,” it is a testimony both to valor and the integrity of the UK, which is now being challenged by socialists posing as nationalists who want the freedom to impose their dead ideology on a once proud land. The Scottish National Party will ruin the great success and renown the Scots won as energetic members of the larger golden era of British growth and expansion. An era of Union that created the world’s greatest power, economy, and empire for three centuries (see Scotland and the British Empire edited by John M. Mackenzie). The famous and vibrant Scottish image we all love would be lost if by “independence” they trade away the legacy of matching grey horses at full gallop for dull gray socialist housing units.
The new UK prime minister, Andy Burnham of the Labour Party, has made some positive statements, including strong calls for UK unity punctuated by a rejection of any referendum on tossing Northern Ireland into the Republic of Ireland. And as welfare costs have exploded, Burnham has used (without attribution) Ronald Reagan’s line that “the best social program is a job.” With a million young people aged 18-24 unemployed, it is imperative to prevent this generation from going directly from school onto the welfare rolls, perhaps for life. Burnham claims he does not want to cut welfare spending (as the Conservative and Reform parties have promised) but to prevent expansion by creating jobs, including rebuilding British industry, and expanding infrastructure in rural areas. Labour has a massive majority in Parliament (411 out of 650 seats) even though it won only 33.7% of the vote due to Conservative and Reform parties splitting the larger vote total on the right. So, Labour can ram through a radical agenda even as the national debt grows.
Burnham’s leftist instincts are to move backwards, putting larger parts of the economy under government control with higher taxes on wealth. In short, a return to a pre-Thatcher regime. His supposed commitment to re-industrialization and accelerated economic growth runs afoul of his commitment to fighting climate change. He has pledged to attend and support the notorious annual UN Climate Conference (COP31 in November), where more responsible national leaders have rejected UN doomsday rhetoric and crippling demands. That Green Party members are shifting to Labour is a worrying sign.
Burnham opened his first speech to Parliament strongly, denouncing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, praising “UK’s steadfast support has helped sustain Ukraine’s resolve.” He appointed the former defense minister John Healey as chancellor after Healy resigned in protest over the failure of Labour to meet the 3% of GNP for defense spending target for 2030. Burnham now claims they will meet that obligation, but with a target of only 3.5% by 2035, which is below the NATO goal of 5%. The Labour government drew up a last year with ambitious rebuilding plans for a military that has so eroded that the legendary Royal Navy can hardly put together a single carrier battle group (the Royal Navy is not only smaller than the fleets of the U.S. and China, but also Russia, France, Japan, and India). But a rearmament program aimed at 2035 risks being too little, too late, given intelligence estimates that see 2030 as a time of crisis.
We took the train to Portsmouth to visit the Royal Navy museum where the history and the spirit of a once truly Great Britain are preserved. There is the HMS Victory, Vice-Adm. Horatio Nelson’s flagship at Trafalgar, where the combined French and Spanish fleets were defeated in 1805, ending Napoleon’s maritime threat. The 100-gun sailing ship is cramped. I could not fully stand up below decks, yet some 800 sailors lived there, many for decades of voluntary service. Nelson died at Trafalgar, but his famous order to the fleet, “England expects every man to do his duty,” brought victory. Great Britain built a global empire covering a quarter of the planet with these “iron men in wooden ships” and their successors. Even today, with all the wealth and technology we have at hand, we marvel at their accomplishments and doubt our own abilities.
Read more We Are In A Cold Civil War — And We Refuse To See It
Secretary of State Mario Rubio, in his brilliant speech last week in Athens, drew on these sentiments. “Heroism, honor, duty — we take these things for granted. We assume that these somehow are universal to all people in all times and in all places. They are not. They are the product of a distinct character, a distinct character which arose here and shaped the whole story of the civilization that came after it. A civilization that we must fight to defend today with the same passion as our forefathers did.”
Rubio went on to address the problem seen across the Anglo-American world. “We felt embarrassed that our achievements set us apart from the rest of the world. Our prosperity somehow became a source of guilt. We no longer believed we deserved and had earned our greatness. The word ‘nationalism’ became a dirty word. And so we tore down our monuments; we condemned our own history. And in too many places, we taught our children to be ashamed of the countries they would inherit. In the process, we opened our borders and outsourced our industry, and allowed our militaries to wither and to decay.”
While in London, a story appeared about how the Imperial War Museum is “rebranding” because young people can’t relate to the world wars. Yet, the purpose of museums is to inform people about events and times that are outside their experience. Museums put current events into perspective and prepare us for the future with the hard-won lessons of the past. Liberals reject this because experience discredits their ideas, which is why they prey on the young.
Our foreign travel focuses on history. Museums, monuments, ruins, and serious reading about what worked and what failed are vital to meet the challenge Secretary Rubio set out. “The course we take will determine whether the West maintains its place at the head of the world or resigns itself to a future of atrophy and servitude and decline.”
William R. Hawkins is President of the Hamilton Center for National Strategy. A former economics professor, he has worked for several Washington think tanks and on the staff of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee. He has written widely on international economics and national security issues for both professional and popular publications, including the Army War College, the U.S. Naval Institute, and the National Defense University, among others.
Read more Don’t Believe the Polls!