In Praise of Unsolicited Advice

This week, the big news in Britain is that Philip Gordon, the US assistant secretary of state for European Affairs, advised the British government to remain in Europe or face the probability that Britain would be less important to the United States.  Quite a lot of Brits got angry.

These folk seem to forget that Britain often express opinions about US policies.  In fact it is a national sport.

There are good reasons for this.  Every national election in the USA has a global effect.  When a new president is inaugurated, he (or maybe one day she) has to learn a lot about the world.  While they are doing this, they can make terrible mistakes.  Moreover, because all their advisors change with each administration, their advisors also go through a dangerous learning process.

Those of us outside the USA get some nasty shocks.  Mitt Romney’s blunders during his world tour gave me a few nasty moments.  How could he have described Jerusalem as the capital of Israel?  If he had been elected, his ignorance could have started wars.  And we non-US citizens can't vote in a presidential election.

Turning to Britain, we have a lot of people who want to pull out of the European Union because they think that the EU has too much power to influence Britain.  These are people who don’t understand the realities.  They think that Britain can survive in isolation – it can’t.  They think that European regulation is burdensome – it isn’t.  They think that Europe is run by an over-large bureaucracy – it isn’t.  They think that pulling out of Europe would affect nobody but us – but it would affect every one of our trading partners.

So when one of our largest trading partners says that a Britain outside the EU would be a less attractive trading partner for the USA, these folk need to hear this message.

Thank you, USA, for telling the truth.  That is what friends do when they see someone about to do something really stupid.