You always know where you are with the Americans. They always let you down
I want to make it clear from the outset of this post that it in no way marks a change in my feelings towards the scores of fine and decent American friends I have made in the half century since I left University. Rather, it simply defines a view I have held for decades now – one indeed shared by millions of US citizens – that those élites who see themselves as the protectors of freedom in general and America in particular are Cro-Magnon psycho throwbacks somehow overlooked by evolution’s hitman natural selection.
They were and are typified by Henry Kissinger, who infamously remarked, “America doesn’t have friends or enemies, it has only interests”. In simply saying this, Kissinger the ultimate cold diplomat was effectively telling we naive Limeys what tits we were in falling for the Special Relationship shtick: the US will dump any ally for a deal, and sup with the Devil to get an even better one. ‘Relationships’ mean diddly-squat compared to The Dollar.
In late 1939, scores of American fliers quietly crossed the border into Canada, posed as Canadian citizens, signed up for the RAF….and never came back. It says a lot about the US State that these young heroes of the Eagle Squadrons have no memorial in their own country – just one from grateful Brits in London.
The US State stood by in 1940 and watched the Nazis bomb London, Coventry, Plymouth, Liverpool & Manchester to bits. Only Ed Murrow stuck with us, risking his life along with other Londoners to broadcast across the Pond to an uncaring Washington about the Blitz. The US lend-leased us supply ships….for which we finished paying just fifteen years ago. There was no write off or discount for us after the war.
When US foreign policy landed us with an endemic Islamist bomber problem, the first time they struck, the US Commander in London ordered all US personnel to leave the City to its fate. When Britain struck out for independence from a grasping anti-democratic EU clique in 2016, US President Obama made a special visit to tell us how we’d go to the back of the queue for US deals if we left the corrupt, bloated and NATO-supported Fourth Reich.
Now the British Prime Minister has dared to say he will use Chinese Huawei telecoms technology in preference to the US version. I suspect Boris Johnson is wrong; I also suspect that Washington is using the ‘security’ argument to protect silicone valley. Either way, Trump slammed the phone down on BoJo last Thursday, and is now saying the “deal” he’s been promising us as a bargaining chip against Brussels “is in doubt”.
Now if those last four pararaphs add up to a Special Relationship, then I’m a red banana with three legs and a family of eleven Syrian germ warfare factories to support: if this relationship is special, then Please Sir, can we sign the standard one instead?
But I pen this bitter post with more to offer than just resentment at the serial Dollar denominated diplomacy of America. My point is actually a serious commercial wake-up call, and it goes like this:
You do not create a prosperous, self-sufficient, independent and competitive State by doing grubby deals with foreign military slimeballs. You do it by making reliable products with an international cachet and functional ingenuity that add up to irrefutably desirable appeal.
That’s how the Germand have done it. Do pay attention.
My advice is this: let’s have no more Prince Andrews making ‘state visits’ to tinpot aggressors, no Theresa Mays dressing like Edwardian mill-girls to placate misogynist genital mutilators, no Nippophiles like Jeremy Hunt virtue signalling to Japanese protectionists….and all the rest of the FCO claptrap that sends Foreign Secretaries to India without mentioning what a profoundly depraved CIA tool Modi is.
If you want to sell brands for export that deliver better performance, offer prestige to the growing Asian middle class and become indispensible to both distributors and users, then this is how you do it:
INVEST IN YOUR CITIZENS
That is to say,
- Train kids from 14 onwards who display an interest in great design, and show creative talent in combining that with engineering functionality
- Reward their successes in the workplace. These will stand the company in much better stead than short-term accountancy derived “savings”, aka adding to the national welfare bill….and our taxes.
- By all means restrict immigrants on a skills-based points system, but prioritise the fulfilment of those human beings we already have here. To do so will reduce their level of criminality and increase loyalty to the company by hugely raising their self-esteem.
None of this is fluffy psychobabble bollocks. Almost all of it is based on forty years of my own experience in creating commercial cultures and helping out-gunned niche clients to find an export market.
This shit works.
World Trade Organisation rules are so much hokum. More than nine out of ten deals involve zero participation by the WTO. Only 6% of UK SMEs (Small & Medium Sized businesses) export to the EU. The SME sector is almost exactly half of all British gdp, and under 3% of them feel they gain from diplomatic ‘deals’.
If we are to make post-Brexit life work, then we have to start paying attention to the data, to the commercial realities, and to the marketing, targeting and brand communications involved in making 600,000 small deals all add up to a booming Britain with ever-expanding exports and more attention paid to growing its own food.
This isn’t the ‘Little Englander ultra-nationalist scumfascistbigotracist’ fantasy pumped out by the Guardian >BBC > Blairite > EU slush fund > New York Times onanist overview from which we have all suffered since June 2016; on the contrary, it is the goforit reality of planned and determined investment and risk taking upon which real capitalism was always based.
HS2 is a political sop from Johnson to keep the northern constituencies onside. It is a complete waste of money that would be far better invested in reducing British dependence upon services and robotisation…..and the massive welfare bill that goes with that.
We do not need a neurotic American or European blocist alliance based on fine words that do not bear examination.
We merely need the confidence and commercial acumen to be what we have always been: a much sought-after brand.
That does not come easy – or involve cliché-ridden press conferences that induce vomitting among the intelligent wise folks out there in Realityland.
Prime Minister: harken unto the words of my great-aunt Lizzie: “fine words do not put butter on the parsnips”.
The Slog 