The Los Angeles Times put out an article today suggesting the U.S. might be better off swapping Texas for England if it wanted to avoid the particular Texas brand of Republicans shutting everything down for their own special reasons.
While as a resident of Texas I cannot possibly approve of a plan that gives Ted Cruz any more control over me than he already has, there are a number of things the L.A. Times haven't considered in its across-the-board approval of English politics.
First, bringing the U.K.'s a ragtag bunch of laws under a constitution will be problematic. Right to bear arms? England hasn't had the right to bear arms since the mid-'90s, when they all got taken off us. The idea of us taking up arms under a constitutional amendment created originally with shooting English people in mind is something of an anomaly.
"We've got the right to own guns again!" "Why?" "In case the English invade." "THEY'RE ALREADY HERE, MAN."
We still have hilarious laws on the books from centuries ago, such as the legality of shooting Welsh people with a bow and arrow on specific bridges at specific times. Laws everywhere. Hundreds of books of laws that we forgot about 600 years ago. Yet the U.K. is far more liberally progressive and open to change than the U.S. (take for example the sudden banning of guns in 1997, or the across-the-board legalization of abortion in 1967) because any of those laws could be suddenly reversed by any judge or bill. Politics and reform become a lot easier when your every move isn't dictated by a document written before almost all modern progress and developments. There's no such thing as "unconstitutional."
The L.A. Times make a good point in that adopting English Conservatives would permeate the right with a far more reasonable breed of conservative; however, they haven't considered that a conservative in Europe would be the political equivalent of a Marxist in the U.S. It'd be like doing away with Ayn Rand and trying to replace her with Castro. English Conservatives are committed to nationalized health care (in fact, our NHS is one of the biggest employers in the WORLD, let alone in the U.K.), to stringent market controls, to legalized abortion, to the incredibly strict control of guns (ruling English Conservatives actually brought in stricter gun legislation in 1988) and to a welfare state that would make Californians recoil in horror.
If that's what Conservatives are committed to, imagine what English liberals are like. Then remember that the ruling party in England is a coalition government, with the Conservative party in tandem with the Liberal Democrats. While the Liberal Democrats essentially had to sell their souls to gain any form of power (historically they are very much the third party in the U.K.), they still believe in things that Obama would dismiss as far-far-far left idealism. They want to decrease the U.K.'s nuclear arsenal, for goodness' sakes. Can you imagine how that policy would go down in the U.S.?
"What we need is a country with far fewer defences." "EXECUTE THIS DANGEROUS RADICAL IMMEDIATELY."
That would be the entire Congressional debate.
If the U.S. is to look to the U.K. for any reason, it's that the ruling party has complete power over the budget. Do you know why that is? It's because that party was elected with a mandate to do specific things, and to utilize the money required to do those things (obviously, major laws have to pass through the houses, but the ruling party does get almost full control over levels of taxation). Thus, there are no shutdowns, simply a judgment on how the rulers have handled the country every four years. You know, like democracy. Even better, the queen has to sign off on everything. I've always thought the U.S. would do better under an unelected dictator, and even better if she lives in several massive taxpayer-funded houses (cue Obama comparisons, commenters).
The L.A. Times also suggests that Wales could become a territory, "like Puerto Rico." I would ask my Welsh wife what she thinks about that, but I have better things to do than get stabbed.
The only way England would ever consider becoming a state of the U.S. is if they were caught in the midst of an economic crisis and had been in recession or flirting with recession for years ... ah. All right. We'll bring the loonies, but you have to give the queen sovereign power over the entire country. Deal? Deal.
