Vassal State
How America Runs Britain
Swift Press, £25
During World War II, Britons grumbled (in the words of comedian Tommy Trinder) that the Americans were “overpaid, oversexed and over here”. The GIs responded that the British were “underpaid, undersexed and under Eisenhower”. Not much has changed in the years since, at least according to Angus Hanton. American troops may have helped save us from Hitler, but American economic domination and ownership of British firms rips off British consumers, stifles the growth of British companies and generally makes us subservient to our cousins on the other side of the Atlantic.
Hanton begins his argument in the supermarket, where he points out that a whole host of brands, including those we tend to consider “British”, are actually owned by American conglomerates. He then broadens his argument to other industries, before looking at the statistics on American ownership of UK assets. He goes on to consider some of the sharp practices pioneered by US tech firms and the financial sector, aimed at maximising the amount of money extracted from the wallets of UK consumers (and the government), while minimising the amount of tax that they have to pay to the Treasury. needed to get one agreed. Hanton also decries the lack of British national champions, but the dismal experience of trying to create some in shipbuilding and car-making in the 1960s and 1970s shows the limits of that strategy.
Hanton does uncover some genuine misbehaviour. Many of the largest tech firms routinely avoid tax and a chunk of what they do pay goes to the US Treasury via a charge on money repatriated from their UK subsidiaries. The US can also Some of Hanton’s arguments be incredibly sharp-elbowed are a bit hyperbolic. US tech when it comes to defending the firms may have made lots of interests of its major companies, money from their subscription but our government has let models, but these have now US firms get away with some been copied by others, and in shocking failures when it comes any case only succeed because to delivering outsourced public people value the products on services, for example. offer. Indeed, Hanton admits US ownership of British late on in his book that US companies isn’t all bad, business success is at least partly however, and it is certainly due to genuine innovation and better than having them bought entrepreneurship. Hanton up by dictatorships in the Gulf laments the failure to agree a or China. Yet there are certainly post-Brexit US-UK trade deal, ways in which our relationship but this is not so much a sign with overseas companies could of domineering American be improved. is a power as a demonstration lively polemic that asks some
makend that the British public is timely questions. (thankfully) unwilling to the concessions (over food safety regulations, for example)