Great Britain: US State

Uh, the US Constitution, for one?

You know you could read "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government..."

as

"the USA will make sure no state will ever be forced to cease being a republic."

or

"the USA will give each state the option of being a republic"

as opposed to

"the USA will force all states to be republics".

I wonder if the interpretation of "guarantee" in this clause has ever been ruled on by the US Supreme Court?
 
Yes, I have heard that Harold Wilson did consider this in the 1970's as a solution to the economic troubles the UK had at the time (I read this in an article debunking the notion that Wilson was a Soviet spy). I assume that it was never taken seriously, however it was still considered enough to be mentioned briefly in Cabinet minutes I believe; I think the discussion revolved around the monarchy question.

As pointed out already the guarantees of republican government in the US constitution can be read many different ways and the US Supreme Court has a long history of giving fairly wide interpretations of the Constitution.
 
IIRC, there are a few parties in the UK that advocate doing away with the Monarchy, and forming a British Republic. I'm pretty sure they're very much in the minority, though.
 
Well, by the end of WWII, England had lost a LOT of territory. If Chuchill had made a descion to become a state, the U.S. probably would have been fine with it. :cool:
 
I've seen a proposal (from the "US Expansionist Party," no less), that has suggested six states:

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Less then 5,000 votes a year I bet.
The Greens want to make the monarchy entirely ceremonial- in 2005, they got 280,000 votes.
The SWP obviously want to abolish the monarchy, but I'm not sure when they last fielded an election candidate. I think more than 5,000 people would vote for them if they did- they claim to have more than 7,000 members.
Obviously, there are the various independence movements (Sinn Fein, SNP, Plaid Cymru, Mebyon Kernow...), many of which want to establish republics.
 
Excepting the obvious POD...

With the exception of somesort of pre-American Revolutionary Imperial representation model, perhaps with Pitt the Elder in power, where the colonies are made self-governing provences of a Federal UK with seats in Westminster, there are few options. Of course, that is not really GB becoming a US state.

Ironically, the best possibility for a post-1789 Act of Union is a successful Nazi invasion of England after 1941. With the US in the war, perhaps Churchill, running a government in exile could come together with Roosevelt in some sort of transnational unity. It MIGHT be sold as a plan to unite not only GB but Canada as well. (Whether the Canadians would go along with such a notion is entirely up for speculation. Probably not. If there is one definition of Canadian, it is NOT American.)

Still, Roosevelt could theoretically offer Churchill the War Department or some other post as a sign of unity. Maybe even the Vice Presidency as his mother was an American Citizen, and Churchill could have qualified for the Presidency as surely as Obama has.

The constitution would have to be amended, but Americans have always had a fascination with Monarchy. They might accept a symbolic head of state.

Of course, under regular circumstances, no amendment of that sort would be entertained by Congress or the state legislatures. But, with the Nazi menace looming and notion of the English-Speaking Peoples standing together, it is possible that GB could be admitted as a state (under enemy occupation).

After the war, some kind of union might endure. Churchill dreamed of a dollar sterling, and his vision of currency union might have succeeded at the Brenton Woods conference were he still holding power after th '45 elections.

What would become of the colonies is another issue, of course. There would be little American support for making India or the African territories part of the Union. Still too much racial opposition. But, should they remain commonweaths as Puerto Rico has--at least until the late 1960's, maybe.

By that point, though, most of the colonies would prefer to become nations.
 
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