Primary Purpose

Daniel Hannan has a post identifying Churchill as the Father of "the Anglosphere". Quite so.

For Churchill, it is important to remember, was on his mother's side part of the American Anglophile WASP elite, while on his father's side he was part of the Whig oligarchy, descended from Malborough and related to the Spencers.

Which is posher? They are about as old as each other, both products of very much the same historical trends, the trends that slightly later bequeathed us the parvenus in the Palace. No wonder that they were, and sometimes still are, given to marrying each other.

Churchill was therefore brought up to treat Britain and America as more or less one country, just as some people now treat Britain and, say, Pakistan as more or less one country, and just as the Royal Family treated Britain and Germany as more or less one country until almost into the present Queen's lifetime.

The importation for marital purposes of American "dollar princesses" and of actual German princesses (or of little more than nominally Danish, and purely nominally Greek, princes) more than a little resembles the importation of spouses from Pakistan, especially since the "dollar princesses" were sometimes related to their new husbands, while the German princesses were always related to theirs, just as the nominally Greek Prince of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg is his wife's cousin.

But Britain and, say, Pakistan are not more or less one country. Britain and Germany were not more or less one country. Britain and America were not more or less one country. Britain and America are not more or less one country. Britain and America never will be more or less one country. Any more than Britain and Germany, including under the aegis of the EU. Or any more than Britain and, say, Pakistan.