If Romney wants to rebuild the special relationship, building on 'an Anglo-Saxon heritage', what might that mean, exactly?
The Republican presidential challenger, Mitt Romney, is reported to want to restore "Anglo-Saxon" relations between Britain and the US as part of a concerted effort to lay down a set of foreign policies to counter accusations from Obama's supporters that he doesn't have enough experience on the world stage.
It's an intriguing idea, even if it is couched in rather lazy terms. What, for instance, happened to the past thousand years of culture bequeathed to us by the Normans, including the lineage of our monarchy (a blood line which has its fair share of German corpuscles)? If Romney wants to forge some kind of union with an anachronistic view of Britain, what are Anglo-Saxon values anyway? Here's a list to get him started …
Our language
"Two nations separated by a common language" – this quotation, often misattributed to Winston Churchill (whose bust Romney wants to return to the White House as part of his re-alignment with Britain) was actually uttered by either Oscar Wilde or George Bernard Shaw … but whatever the source, the language has its roots in Germanic dialects. Old English, as spoken by the Anglo-Saxons, has been continually modified over the years. After the Norman invasion and its French influence, it gradually changed over hundreds of years into Middle English and, from the 15th century, evolved into the language we are all familiar with today. Its greatest threat these days is probably the former Republican president's "Bushisms".
Alfred: not so Great at cookery
The king of Wessex was allegedly so preoccupied with ridding us of the Danes that he accidentally left cakes, entrusted to him by a peasant woman, to burn in the fire. This simple tale tells us all we need to know, not only about the otherworldliness of our betters, but also about our deep distrust of gastronomic excellence. It is why all true Anglo-Saxons – who have to hold down jobs, raise children, watch television and avoid taxes levied upon them by a militantly unjust crown – believe that the ready meal and the takeaway are the pinnacles of western culinary achievement. Our Anglo-Saxon transatlantic brethren, it is noted, invented the TV dinner, the hamburger "restaurant" and morbid obesity; we are but one nation separated by a common BMI.
More immigration
It was sixth century British monk Gildas who saw the coming of the Anglo-Saxons as God's punishment for the sins of the Britons – an apocalyptic view that would be right at home in the delusional wing of the Republican party, and proof that the basic British distrust of foreigners was alive and well long before the barbarians invaded. If the Anglo-Saxons taught us anything, it is surely that we are all foreigners in our own country. Perhaps the Republicans can draw some inspiration from that.
A consensus view on the Ikea shopping experience
Our northern European roots naturally makes us prefer the flat-pack furniture and utilitarian cheapness of Ikea over the untrustworthy "style" peddled by more Mediterranean designers.
Soft-soaping the monarchy
According to the possibly apocryphal legend, the Anglo-Saxon king Cnut was thought to be so omnipotent by his courtiers that he could stop the tide coming in. He proved the sycophants wrong, but it isn't entirely unlikely that Nicholas Witchell or a simpering successor might one day repeat the error. One notes that the same servility to rulers applies to our Anglo-Saxon cousins across the water and that, no matter what their political hue, monarchs are accorded the respect due in the office of president.
Distrust of the French
In 1066, Britain's mongrel nation status became complete, having been officially invaded by the Romans, the Angles and Saxons, the Jutes from Denmark, the Vikings and finally by the Normans who, critically, stopped Anglo-Saxon culture in its tracks. Twenty years after the invasion, the Anglo-Saxon nobility were in exile, or consigned to the peasantry, with only 8% of England under their control. The myth of Anglo-Saxon roots that Romney wants to perpetrate denies the enormous contribution to British culture by, essentially, the French. Without the Norman invasion of Anglo-Saxon England, our language and culture would obviously be very different – Mitt Romney would be wise not to cast us all back into the Dark Ages.