Letter from London: Was it that, JD?

It was fun listening to Spirit again. I am of course talking about the old Randy California-Ed Cassidy band Spirit. In this special instance, their venerable album Spirit of ’76 — in particular, the opening electro-jam medley America, The Beautiful/The Times They Are A-Changing.

Listening to it again flashed me back to the magical Inner Hebridean isle of Iona just off the larger island of Mull on the west coast of Scotland. Iona has a population of only 122. In midwinter, with marvellous friends, I would sit by a crackling fire, with one or two dog-eared books of American poetry on an Arabic rug, imagining the words putting the dear world to rights. It was all so different back then and nothing quite matched our teenage expertise. Also, my mother’s family hailed originally from Skye some 65 miles further north, past Staffa and Fingall’s Cave. I didn’t have to imagine the ancient or weepingly beautiful — it was already there. A friend of my daughter has just returned from Iona and tells me it is still magical, including its highest point Dun-I from where I would peer excitedly across the Atlantic towards Canada and the States. No, I took kindly to American band Spirit then — before the imminent shin-kicks of the Pistols and later post-punk manoeuvres of Magazine — and I was taking kindly to it again last week in London: ‘O beautiful for halcyon skies for amber waves of grain… for purple mountain majesties [So that’s where musician and poet David Berman got the name Purple Mountains] above the enameled plain…’

But as Biden finally withdraws from the election race what is this increasingly anti-UK Spirit of ’24 coming at us right now especially from the bearded mouth of Donald Trump’s new running mate JD Vance? He says that under Labour we are an Islamist nuclear-armed country. Upon hearing this, new deputy prime minister Angela Rayner had to remind everyone the 39 year-old junior senator from Ohio had a history of ‘fruity’ remarks. I will not even bother with his presumable great replacement theory — whose proponents include political bedfellows Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk, Georgia Meloni, Viktor Orban. Nor am I trying to cancel JD Vance here — he just seems to take far too much pleasure insulting America’s allies, as US-based podcaster and Brit Katty Kay pointed out last week alongside Anthony Scaramucci. Meanwhile Kari Lake in a podcast with Emily Maitlis was also venomous about the Brits — and about Emily Maitlis. It is fascinating — bordering on entertaining — that they should keep coming at us like this. I suppose foreign secretary David Lammy showed some grace by comparison by saying he could locate ‘common ground’ with Vance, describing him as a ‘friend’ after meeting him last May. But Christopher Steele, former MI6 head of the Russia desk, and author of the famous 35-page Steele dossier, so not every Republican’s favourite person, said: ‘The British media and political class have started normalising Trump and his isolationist running mate JD Vance, thinking they might win in November. In reality this ticket poses a profound threat to our security, economy and Rule of Law. I hope we are planning accordingly.’ Former Republican and ex-FBI head James Comey has since said on BBC’s Newsnight the Republican Party was ‘a cult’.

It is not that Brits irritated by Vance don’t welcome criticism when due. They just don’t like sly pot shots taken at a democratically elected new government by a so-called close ally. It shows weakness. It was ironic that London had its State Opening of Parliament at the time (where incidentally the Household Cavalry guarding the occasion showed no signs of an Islamist takeover). This was the same Household Cavalry which for its sins has been involved in every single major war from here since 1660. The Imperial State Crown used at the State Opening includes a sapphire from Edward the Confessor’s ring — Edward ruled from 1042 until 1066. The actual State Opening goes way back to the 14th century and the King assembling nobles and representatives of the Commons. So what is it, JD? Is it about the American War of Independence? Was it the Brits burning down the White House? Interestingly, as both sides of the House of Commons in Westminster chatted warmly among themselves after the State Opening, political commentator Adam Schwarz was inspired enough to say: ‘Hard to imagine Trump, Biden, Vance and Harris having a good laugh after the election like Sunak, Starmer, Dowden and Rayner are.’

As it happens, I was due to meet two bright-as-a-button Americans in our capital last week in a London always at its best during the summer months. The first American — a well loved man and subject of a very good book — phoned to say he was not feeling well and hoped we could meet next week. The second — a very old friend from New York days — has just won his nickel bet with his centenarian father that Biden would not run for president. (He also reckoned Trump if elected may even try to arrest James Comey.) I like my American friends. Another one enjoys London so much he has become a British citizen, and in fact flew in here for the first time as a bona fide Brit only a few weeks ago.

I wonder how it was for the London Group arriving 80 years ago. They were the famous film-makers blacklisted by Joseph McCarthy’s Un-American Activities Committee who went on to make movie history here. Will we be seeing more soon? The London Group included Carl Foreman who wrote High Noon and eventually helmed Columbia Pictures here in London, writing and producing The Guns of Navarone in the process, a good film featuring US Marines JD Vance could relate to. Foreman ended up more British than the British, which happens sometimes. He became governor of the British Film Institute and a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire). To this day, there is a BAFTA award for Most Promising Newcomer named after him. Many Brits love all these Americans — just like they loved Stanley Kubrick when he moved over here too.

Those gifted filmmakers who fled persecution from the States also included director Joseph Losey (The Servant, The Accident, The Go-Between). There was the Oscar-winning Donald Ogden Stewart (The Philadelphia Story) who had previously chaired Hollywood’s Anti-Nazi League. Adrian Scott who came over here wrote and directed Zulu later before leaving the very English-sounding Shipston-on-Stour for the great cutting room in the sky. There was Bob Roberts who produced All Night Long. Hannah Weinstein when she upped and left the States created Sapphire Films over here, making The Adventures of Robin Hood, the first transatlantic TV hit ever. Robin Hood, in fact, used so many blacklisted writers they were like a band of Merry Men — Waldo Salt, Robert Lees, Ring Lardner Jr, Adrian Scott again.

Of course, the really big story from the the States was Biden last Sunday — now put out of our misery, we were until then as confused as the president appeared to be. And yet, the really serious undertow pulling at our ankles now remains the prospect of Trump and Vance. For instance, if they get in will they even have our backs? If not, will we want them to have our backs? With Nigel Farage acting as Trump’s only Limey confidante — if you exclude Boris Johnson no doubt irking JD Vance by popping over to campaign for more arms for Ukraine — we could be in a right old mess. The lack of complexity and nuance over this ticket terrifies some Brits, and we know only too well from Brexit what binary thinking can do to a nation. If Trump abandons NATO — not impossible, remember — and the US does not have our backs, it could be argued we will then be surrounded by potential adversaries. We will have become just an island already manipulated to push away its closest neighbours, an island who fought more recent wars to protect American interests than anyone else, taught time after time to hate one superpower over another, with nothing to show for it. Fully untethered, if we really are staring at the end of American leadership around the world, we will end up in deep space in a fit of unrewarded loyalty, banging into each other while singing: ‘Your circuit’s dead, there’s something wrong, can you hear me, Major Tom?’

I have a confession to make. I never liked all of the album Spirit of ‘76. After the aforementioned opening medley, I used to jump straight to their unrivalled version — in my opinion — of Like A Rolling Stone. In fact, talking of chrome horses and diplomats, for many years the Brits working as diplomats in Washington DC over the summer months used to charge hardship pay. This was because of the inhospitable climate. It was really just to wind the Americans up affectionately over their choice of where to have a capital. Was it that, JD?

Peter Bach lives in London.