Britain and America

BritainAndAmerica's week in Washington

Samuel Coates writes about last week's BritainAndAmerica visit to Washington DC.

The main purpose of the trip that Tim and I enjoyed last week was to meet with friends, thinkers and politicians in order to discuss how to develop the agenda of this website - the transatlantic relationship in particular.

The main meetings we had on this topic were with John Bolton (former Ambassador to the United Nations, now at the American Enterprise Institute), Rick Santorum (former Senator, now at the Ethics and Public Policy Center), Tim Goeglein (Deputy Director of The White House's Office of Public Liason), Nile Gardiner (Director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom), Adrian Wooldridge (Washington DC Editor for The Economist), Jennifer Marshall (Director of Domestic Policy at the Heritage Foundation) Seth Liebsohn (Producer of Bill Bennett's Morning in America), Gerard Baker (US Editor of the Times in London) and Peter Brookes (Foreign Policy expert at the Heritage Foundation), amongst several others.

On Monday, Tim Montgomerie (Editor of Britain and America - pictured on the right above) debated the post-Blair transatlantic relationship at the Hudson Institute, with Geoffrey Wheatcroft, John O'Sullivan and Christopher Hitchens. It was an interesting debate, with Wheatcroft and Hitchens clashing horns over historical analogies and Montgomerie giving insights into the current political climate in Britain. Wheatcroft was alone in believing Blair was a mere poodle to Bush, with Hitchens pointing out that his hawkishness against Serbia and his famous Chicago speech of 1999 showed Blair was an interventionist while George W Bush was still governing Texas.  The debate was recorded for C-SPAN but has not yet been broadcast.

On Tuesday, we gave a presentation to a number of Capitol Hill bloggers about our work on BritainAndAmerica and ConservativeHome. Rob Bluey, who chaired the event at the Heritage Foundation, followed this up with an article on TownHall, and David All with a video interview.  Another of our contacts - Reihan Salam - has written about ConservativeHome.com on Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish.

One of the best observations made by one of the above was that there are in fact two transatlantic relationships - those between the Right and Left on both sides. Arguably, the transatlantic relationship of the Left (in the media class and diplomatic services, in particular) has never been stronger, whilst the opposite could be true of the Right.

With the exception of the relentlessly optimistic, most conservatives we met were very despondent about the state of conservatism in America. They felt let down by the Bush administration and were uninspired by the contenders for the presidential candidacy. Adrian Wooldridge is to give a speech to the Philadelphia Society about the future of conservatism later this week. It will be the first time he has addressed the subject since he co-authored The Right Nation, and we will analyse it here.

The tragedy in Virginia meant there was little opportunity to promote our new video - Can America trust the BBC? - but it has nonetheless been viewed more than 13,000 times so far.

We weren't the only conservative Brits in town - Matthew, Blair and Corin from the excellent TaxPayers'Alliance happened to be over at the same time to share notes with similar organisations in America. The four of us had a very interesting diversion in visiting the White House to see George W Bush board the Marine One helicopter.

Over the next few days we will be posting in more detail about some of our Washington discussions:

• The unhappiness of Washington's conservatives;
• The reasons why the White House looks set to turn blue;
• The two transatlantic relationships;
• The Tories and America;
• What should be done about Iran?
• Is Hillary a secret hawk?

Welcome to BritainandAmerica.com

BritainandAmerica.com is a proud believer in the special relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom.  This new blog will focus on political developments in the USA and offer an alternative account of those developments to that provided by, for example, the BBC (the Corporation itself recently acknowledging its tendency to anti-Americanism at its own 'bias seminar').

In some important respects the next US election will be more impactful on British citizens than their own General Election.  Only the USA has the military power to defeat the terrorists in nations like Afghanistan and Iraq.  If American voters choose isolationism over the next few years the whole world will be dramatically affected.  If American voters choose protectionism the international economy and the poorest nations, in particular, will suffer.  Without American leadership on global warming the Brown-Cameron commitment to climate change will be almost pointless.

If the implications for the UK of American politics provide one big theme of BritainandAmerica.com another big theme will be British media reporting of US politics:

• The Financial Times and Economist have influential readerships in America.
• High proportions of the online readerships of The Times and Guardian are from the USA.
• And then, of course, there is the BBC.  BBC Online is read widely in the USA and BBC foreign affairs programming is supplied to ABC and many US radio stations.  BBC journalists are regular pundits on American news programmes.  On Sunday night the BBC's Katty Kay was telling Chris Matthews that the world community would be disappointed at America if American voters did not punish the GOP for Bush's handling of the war in Iraq.

In today's global media village the British media are bigger and bigger players in US politics and they tend to help the Democrats.

Updated regularly BritainandAmerica.com will profile the main players in American politics and provide briefings on key themes including the role of Christian conservatives; the power of money in US politics; the increasing ghettoisation of news; and the power of tax policy at elections.

It will also look at what UK politicians can learn from American campaign techniques and use of the internet.