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  "path": "/opinion/lee-cohen-america-independence-day-english-inheritance",
  "publishedAt": "2026-07-04T06:00:03.000Z",
  "site": "https://www.gbnews.com",
  "tags": [
    "Membership",
    "The GB News Editorial Charter"
  ],
  "textContent": "\n\n\n\nOn my nation’s 250th anniversary this July 4, I am reminding my countrymen of the great debt we owe to the mother country we divorced in 1776.\n\nThe United States became the freest and most powerful nation on earth owing entirely to the inheritance of English traditions of limited government, common law, individual rights, entrepreneurism and accountable sovereignty.\n\n###\n\n\n\n\nThose traditions, never held by continental Europe, alarmingly now face steady erosion in Britain.\n\nA governing class wedded to high migration, institutional activism, and diluted national authority is weakening the foundations that produced exceptional results on both sides of the Atlantic.\n\nAmerica’s constitutional order drew directly from British sources, though many are actually English.\n\nThe Magna Carta, in 1215, first limited arbitrary royal power and established due process.\n\n###\n\n\n\n\nTRENDING\n\nStories\n\nVideos\n\nYour Say\n\n###\n\n\n\n\nThe 1689 Bill of Rights placed Parliament above the Crown, barred standing armies in peacetime, and protected rights against excessive bail and taxation.\n\nAdam Smith, from whom we take our free market spirit, was a Scot.\n\nLocke developed his ideas on natural rights and government by consent in England.\n\nThose ideas crossed the ocean and informed the Declaration of Independence.\n\nAt the Constitutional Convention, Alexander Hamilton described the British system as the best model the world had produced.\n\n###\n\n\n\n\n###\n\n\n\n\n###\n\n\n\n\nThe United States adapted this inheritance for a continental republic.\n\nIt added federal structure and explicit constitutional protections.\n\nThe results followed. English-settled nations have led in GDP per capita, patent output, and rule-of-law indices for generations.\n\nCommon law systems emphasise precedent, property security, and incremental reform.\n\nThey have outperformed more centralised civil law traditions in long-run economic and political stability.\n\n### LATEST DEVELOPMENTS\n\n\n\n\n###\n\n\n\n\n###\n\n\n\n\nThe inheritance works when nations defend it. In the current US administration, renewed emphasis on sovereignty produced rapid shifts.\n\nIllegal southern border crossings dropped to levels not seen in decades.\n\nOfficial statistics record over 600,000 deportations, with administration figures showing substantial additional self-departures.\n\nEnergy production rose. Selected regulatory rollbacks took hold.\n\nThese changes demonstrate that secure borders, prioritised domestic capacity, and resistance to institutional overreach generate tangible gains in control and confidence. The old English-derived formula retains force.\n\n###\n\n\n\n\n###\n\n\n\n\nModern Britain has chosen differently. Net migration continues to pile unsustainable pressure on housing, schools, GPs and the NHS in a small, densely populated island.\n\nIntegration failures in specific towns and cities have become impossible to ignore.\n\nGrooming gang scandals exposed years of appalling institutional lunacy – and in some cases active reluctance – to protect vulnerable girls from group-based exploitation.\n\nThe toll of inconsistent policing costs British lives. The Online Safety Act has expanded state oversight of expression.\n\nActivist priorities influence appointments in public bodies and broadcasting.\n\n###\n\n\n\n\n###\n\n\n\n\nParliamentary sovereignty registers as secondary to international alignments and domestic power shifts toward regulators and quangos.\n\nProductivity growth remains subdued. Public services show persistent strain.\n\nThese outcomes track policy choices that elevate volume migration and layered governance over national cohesion and institutional focus.\n\nSir Keir Starmer’s recent resignation confirms the scale of the failure.\n\nInstalled with promises of stability and competence, his Government delivered continued migration pressures, stagnant productivity, and institutional drift.\n\n###\n\n\n\n\nPublic tolerance snapped and it seems unlikely Andy Burnham offers real departure.\n\nHis record and instincts remain anchored in the same progressive managerialism that prioritises international optics and diversity targets over border sovereignty and cultural cohesion.\n\nThe revolving door at the top changes personnel. It does not restore the inheritance.\n\nThe contrast with the United States is instructive. American policy has tightened border enforcement and redirected bureaucratic effort toward domestic priorities.\n\nBritain has sustained high net inflows for years even as services buckle.\n\n###\n\n\n\n\nEnglish legal and political traditions powered the industrial revolution, naval dominance, and the conditions for later American expansion.\n\nPost-war British policy experimented with expansive welfare, European integration, and multiculturalism without strong assimilation requirements.\n\nRelative economic performance and social trust metrics have suffered by comparison with core Anglosphere peers that retained tighter control.\n\nRecent polling captures the domestic reaction. Reform UK leads national voting intention surveys — the clearest signal yet that large sections of the public want a return to border sovereignty and national priority over the post-war consensus.\n\nLarge sections of the public see a disconnect between elite preferences and everyday pressures on housing, wages, and identity.\n\nBritain still holds decisive advantages. Its common law system underpins global finance and commerce. The monarchy we Yanks abandoned provides unique soft power and diplomatic power.\n\n###\n\n\n\n\nCommercial instincts and maritime geography remain. These assets supported Britain’s preeminence for centuries.\n\nThe post-war period introduced different assumptions. High migration without corresponding integration demands, regulatory expansion, and cultural reframing of national history as liability have coincided with slower growth and cohesion difficulties.\n\nThe data across English-heritage countries shows the pattern. Nations that defend sovereignty and cultural continuity sustain higher trust and output. Nations that treat these as negotiable lose ground.\n\nThe American anniversary supplies a direct benchmark. The United States demonstrates what the English inheritance can achieve when defended without apology.\n\nBritain originated the practical model of accountable liberty that shaped much of the modern world. Its current leaders treat elements of that model as outdated or problematic.\n\nRestoring effective border control, reasserting parliamentary authority over supranational and regulatory creep, and demanding colour-blind institutional competence are not radical experiments. They are recoveries of British practice.\n\nThe evidence from the United States experience is straightforward. Nations that uphold this inheritance maintain advantages in power, wealth, stability, innovation, and public confidence.\n\nNations that dilute it pay measurable costs. Britain retains the institutional memory and capacity to choose renewal.\n\nAs an American champion of Britain, I am confident the encouraging awakening of ordinary British people will force it.\n\nOnly then will the principles of our American-led inheritance remain a living strength in Britain, where it was born, rather than descending, in ashes to a historical footnote.\n\n###\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n**Our Standards: The GB News Editorial Charter**",
  "title": "America turned 250 by defending its English inheritance. Britain is throwing hers away"
}