Airstrip one 🇬🇧🇺🇸

Britain is not America’s 51st state. But it’s hard to ignore the amount of everyday life that runs through US systems. The phone in your pocket probably runs on American software. The cloud services behind your work and your messages are likely American, too. So are many of the networks moving our money around.

By late 2025, around 1.4 million people in the UK worked for American companies. The United States is Britain’s largest investor, with £640.3 billion of inward investment at the end of 2024, 30% of the total. 

American firms do pay tax in Britain. But the question is how much value here is taxed here, and how much ultimately flows back across the Atlantic. 

The special relationship is now so much more than rhetoric. It’s embedded in payrolls, software contracts, cloud infrastructure and capital flows. Can we get any closer to the States?

BFFs

Winston Churchill coined the term special relationship in his 1946 Iron Curtain speech. The UK-US allyship was forged in the white heat of the Second World War, which saw the pair integrate military and intelligence to an unprecedented degree. Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt exchanged more than 1,700 letters and telegrams, bringing the strategic command of both nations particularly close.

The relationship peaked during the Cold War. The 1980s partnership between Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan witnessed the fall of the Soviet Union, ushering in the End of History. The Blair-Bush bromance hit a slightly different note in a post-9/11 world, binding Britain to America’s war on terror. For many Atlanticists, that was the moment the special relationship lost some of its sheen.

The precedent for the transatlantic frenemies lies in the Great Rapprochement of the late 19th century. After decades of conflict, including the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 (during which the British burned down the White House), London saw the writing on the wall: the US was set to inherit Britain’s position as imperium supremo. Time to change tack. We’ve been the junior partner in the alliance ever since.

Poodle politics

The special relationship anchors the Anglosphere and reflects a deep bond across culture, trade, investment, intelligence, and military alliances.

But it’s easy to forget the strength of the ‘ship when looking at the front pages of Britain’s papers. President Donald Trump recently laid into Prime Minister Keir Starmer over the UK’s stance on Iran, specifically the decision not to allow the US to use British sovereign bases for initial offensive actions. Many Britons are unenamoured with Trump and highly sceptical of his activities in the Middle East, so Starmer’s decision to hold back was, for once, largely in lockstep with public mood. 

When Starmer initially hesitated to allow strikes on Iran from RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire or Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, the American response was… undiplomatic. To MAGA, the UK’s primary value is as a stationary aircraft carrier. When Starmer later relented, Trump accused the PM of seeking to “join wars after we've already won”.

While Starmer, a former Director of Public Prosecutions, treats international law as sacrosanct, the current White House views legalism as a distraction, at best. With organisations like the UN sidelined, the UK’s traditional role of both softening and legitimising US hard power is becoming less valuable than it once was.

Offshore hub

Britain is a bridgehead for American firms entering European markets. That brings in substantial capital. Since the 1980s, and especially after the Big Bang of 1986, the UK’s very open markets have rarely questioned where capital comes from. 

‍Recent figures put the proportion of UK shares owned by the rest of the world at a record high of 58.8%. Beneficiaries in the United States hold the largest share of this overseas total, at roughly £694 billion. US juggernaut BlackRock (BLK), the world’s largest asset manager, is one of the biggest shareholders across much of the London market.

When a huge share of corporate activity and investment is tied to American companies, it muddies UK thinking on regulation, industrial policy, and environmental standards. We see this now as Britain, post-Brexit, attempts to walk a tightrope between US and EU regulatory environments. 

In 2026, London still handles nearly twice as much foreign exchange turnover as the US, underlining its role as a bridgehead for global capital. The City has, for decades, positioned itself as a frictionless base for firms like JP Morgan (JPM) and Goldman Sachs (GS) to operate internationally.

FVEY

This economic enmeshment is the price of admission to the world’s most elite club. Five Eyes, an intelligence network between the UK, US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, is fundamentally a UK-US core (the UKUSA Agreement) and remains one of the most enduring security partnerships in history.

Five Eyes gives the UK access to intelligence and capabilities far beyond what it could gather alone, while also allowing the burden of collection and analysis to be shared. MI6 describes Five Eyes as a key alliance, and it now extends beyond spycraft into tech security, cyber threats and preventing industrial espionage. Rows between prime ministers and presidents rarely tell the whole story.

GCHQ’s geographical reach and Britain’s diplomatic network provide the US with access and legitimacy it cannot easily find elsewhere. The depth of this integration is so total that British intelligence officers work alongside their American counterparts at Fort Meade, the home of the NSA. Britain is not just dependent on the US. It is also useful to it. 

Neutered deterrent

The British military is also deeply integrated with US systems. The UK buys title to Trident II D5 missiles from a shared pool maintained at Kings Bay, Georgia. Its nuclear deterrent depends on close cooperation with the US and American contractors such as Lockheed Martin on the missile system, alongside British firms including Rolls-Royce, BAE Systems, Babcock and AWE.

In 2025, the Starmer government deepened this dependency by purchasing a squadron of F-35A Lightning II jets. Unlike the British ‘B’ models, these are dual-capable aircraft, designed to carry American B61-12 tactical nuclear bombs.

The integration goes beyond hardware. Through AUKUS and the 2026 Single Information Environment, UK military sensors and algos are being folded into the Pentagon’s data architecture. British subs, fighter jets, and logistics hubs now run on digital platforms provided by US firms such as Palantir (PLTR) and Accenture (ACN).

Reverse merger

Why not bite the bullet and join the Union? In 1966 and 1967, Harold Wilson, fed up with both Europe and the Commonwealth, reportedly discussed the prospect of Britain officially getting into bed with the US. 

Based on today’s output per head, Britain would join the Union as a middling or lower-ranking US state. The Constitution makes admitting new states fairly straightforward. Congress can do it by ordinary legislation, with presidential approval. However, with a population nearing 70 million, a single British state would wield more power in the House of Representatives than California. To maintain balance, the UK would have to be carved up.

The neatest solution is to lean on the nine official regions: North East, North West, Yorkshire, East Midlands, West Midlands, East of England, London, South East and South West. Maybe give them historic names like Anglia (South East) and Wessex (South West). Many of these places have strong identities, some more administrative. But that is true of plenty of US states, too. Don’t forget Wales, Scotland, and Northern Island!

Union flag

Each of these new states would have its own Governor, its own legislature, and two US Senators a pop. This would grant the former Great Britain outsized influence in Washington (12 new states, 24 Senators).

Geography should be no barrier. While London is three-and-a-half-thousand miles from Washington DC, Hawaii (the last to join in 1959) is closer to five-thousand miles away from the US capital. Both are islands. One has the weather. The other has the City.  

The almost-2,000-year-old City of London, global financial capital, would need to comply with federal US banking laws, becoming a regional branch of Wall Street. There would be a harmonisation period with Sterling retired in favour of the Dollar. The British Monarchy would be relegated to an even more ceremonial role. Something like a high-end heritage brand.

Britain would have federal judges and Senate races, and presidential campaign stops in Milton Keynes and Hull. Guns, abortion, labour laws and free speech rules would become constitutional culture wars that would make the conscious uncoupling of Brexit look like a tea party. 

In return, the US would be acquiring a giant aircraft carrier with a financial centre bolted on: nuclear weapons, intelligence reach, GCHQ, deep military integration, Atlantic geography, and a convenient perch just off Europe. Who needs Greenland?

Vassal state

The reality is the special relationship matters more to London than it does to Washington. The US can afford to treat Britain as one ally among many. Britain can’t afford to treat the US the same way. Rows between Starmer and Trump dominate the headlines. But beneath the surface, US power sits in the nitty gritty of our economic architecture.

How sovereign can a nation really be if its success depends on alignment with an increasingly capricious superpower? Angus Hanton’s Vassal State argues Britain has traded independence for the hard reality of American protection. We may not be the 51st state, but we have become what Orwell predicted: a strategic outpost, useful, if not vital, to American interests, held within systems of capital and security shaped more in Washington than Westminster.