American political commentator Lee Cohen writes about how Britain needs to remember what it gave to America this July 4

On 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.

The 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.

Those traditions, never held by continental Europe, alarmingly now face steady erosion in Britain.

A 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.

America’s constitutional order drew directly from British sources, though many are actually English.

The Magna Carta, in 1215, first limited arbitrary royal power and established due process.

The 1689 Bill of Rights placed Parliament above the Crown, barred standing armies in peacetime, and protected rights against excessive bail and taxation.

Adam Smith, from whom we take our free market spirit, was a Scot.

Locke developed his ideas on natural rights and government by consent in England.

Those ideas crossed the ocean and informed the Declaration of Independence.

At the Constitutional Convention, Alexander Hamilton described the British system as the best model the world had produced.

The United States adapted this inheritance for a continental republic.

It added federal structure and explicit constitutional protections.

The results followed. English-settled nations have led in GDP per capita, patent output, and rule-of-law indices for generations.

Common law systems emphasise precedent, property security, and incremental reform.

They have outperformed more centralised civil law traditions in long-run economic and political stability.

The inheritance works when nations defend it. In the current US administration, renewed emphasis on sovereignty produced rapid shifts.

Illegal southern border crossings dropped to levels not seen in decades.

Official statistics record over 600,000 deportations, with administration figures showing substantial additional self-departures.

Energy production rose. Selected regulatory rollbacks took hold.

These 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.

Modern Britain has chosen differently. Net migration continues to pile unsustainable pressure on housing, schools, GPs and the NHS in a small, densely populated island.

Integration failures in specific towns and cities have become impossible to ignore.

Grooming gang scandals exposed years of appalling institutional lunacy – and in some cases active reluctance – to protect vulnerable girls from group-based exploitation.

The toll of inconsistent policing costs British lives. The Online Safety Act has expanded state oversight of expression.

Activist priorities influence appointments in public bodies and broadcasting.

Parliamentary sovereignty registers as secondary to international alignments and domestic power shifts toward regulators and quangos.

Productivity growth remains subdued. Public services show persistent strain.

These outcomes track policy choices that elevate volume migration and layered governance over national cohesion and institutional focus.

Sir Keir Starmer’s recent resignation confirms the scale of the failure.

Installed with promises of stability and competence, his Government delivered continued migration pressures, stagnant productivity, and institutional drift.

Public tolerance snapped and it seems unlikely Andy Burnham offers real departure.

His record and instincts remain anchored in the same progressive managerialism that prioritises international optics and diversity targets over border sovereignty and cultural cohesion.

The revolving door at the top changes personnel. It does not restore the inheritance.

The contrast with the United States is instructive. American policy has tightened border enforcement and redirected bureaucratic effort toward domestic priorities.

Britain has sustained high net inflows for years even as services buckle.

English legal and political traditions powered the industrial revolution, naval dominance, and the conditions for later American expansion.

Post-war British policy experimented with expansive welfare, European integration, and multiculturalism without strong assimilation requirements.

Relative economic performance and social trust metrics have suffered by comparison with core Anglosphere peers that retained tighter control.

Recent 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.

Large sections of the public see a disconnect between elite preferences and everyday pressures on housing, wages, and identity.

Britain 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.

Commercial instincts and maritime geography remain. These assets supported Britain’s preeminence for centuries.

The 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.

The 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.

The American anniversary supplies a direct benchmark. The United States demonstrates what the English inheritance can achieve when defended without apology.

Britain 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.

Restoring 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.

The evidence from the United States experience is straightforward. Nations that uphold this inheritance maintain advantages in power, wealth, stability, innovation, and public confidence.

Nations that dilute it pay measurable costs. Britain retains the institutional memory and capacity to choose renewal.

As an American champion of Britain, I am confident the encouraging awakening of ordinary British people will force it.

Only 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.