Why the UK wants America onside

By The Rt Hon Michael Portillo Conservative MP for Kensington and Chelsea

Churchill and Roosevelt exemplified the Anglo-US bond

As part of a BBC-led global debate about the United States place in the world, former UK Defence Secretary Michael Portillo explains why Britain will always maintain close ties with America.

We British defer to nobody in our love of liberty, but we have to admit that the most uplifting odes to freedom have been written by Americans - in the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution and the Gettysburg Address.

To this day, Americans have the self-confidence to be patriotic, and their school children daily re-affirm their allegiance to flag and country.

I believe that the British admire a nation that asserts the values which we share, lacking the post-colonial guilt that inhibits us from doing so.

Every time our two countries join forces we feel again a familiar rush of adrenalin

60 years on, the memory of World War II still binds Britain and America. Together we saved the world from tyranny, and Winston Churchill supplied the rhetoric of our common defiance of evil.

British admiration of America is partly a by-product of nostalgia for our own finest hour. Nowadays, every time our two countries join forces we feel again a familiar rush of adrenalin.

US dynamism

The common language - which Churchill jokingly said separates us - actually strongly reinforces the bonds between us. The British are bilingual in American and British English, even if Americans are not.

Many British enjoy European culture but feel more akin to Americans

That means that we British enter fully into the world's most intriguing politics and we absorb the US's dynamic development of language and ways of thinking. America sets the globe's cultural fashion.

We can accept that without the resentment that the French feel. The English language enables us to open up a two-way street (of sorts) with America, and our cultural exports range from the Beatles to Hugh Grant and BBC television programmes.

Much though the British love French food and Italian villas, we have never been excited by the "European Dream". We do not live in fear of World War II starting again, and we find talk of a common European home too idealistic for our practical frame of mind.

We remain an English-speaking island. Not being gripped by European delirium leaves us free to be intrigued by American materialism.

Enduring interest

Although Britain has lost its fear of a war between France and Germany, we still feel anxiety about our security. In general, we have been less concerned about American imperialism than about American isolationism.

We want America to be over here, and alongside; from which it follows that we are generally willing to be alongside America.

That is our enduring interest, and every prime minister from Clement Attlee to Tony Blair has felt the strong pull of that imperative.

It would take a lot to shake such a deep-rooted relationship.

I worry, a little, that the US is taking risks in limiting the liberty of its citizens, and some Americans at least are less against imperialism than their forebears were.

But I have faith still in the American electorate. Liberty is engraved on their hearts, and they retain a healthy scepticism about American involvement in the world beyond the 50 states.

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What The World Thinks of America was broadcast in the UK on BBC Two on Tuesday, 17 June, 2003 at 2100 BST.

You can also watch the programme again from this website.