Thanksgiving would never work in Keir Starmer's Britain, where national pride is a guilty secret - Lee Cohen

This year, though, my gratitude feels sharper—because I’m thankful not only for what we inherited but for the fact that America, under President Trump, is still willing to defend that inheritance with strength, pride, and unapologetic patriotism.

I wish I could say the same for Britain’s current government. Tragically, the great nation that gave the world its understanding of liberty is now governed by a political class that treats its own history like a guilty secret.

While Americans sit down to give thanks, Britons are forced to endure a Labour administration led by Keir Starmer, flanked by figures like Rachel Reeves, David Lammy and Sadiq Khan, whose governing philosophy amounts to a long, joyless apology tour, where the most important principle is “diversity is our strength”.

At the heart of the Anglo-American idea is free speech — the idea that the individual mind cannot be subordinated to the state.

The First Amendment remains the purest distillation of that principle, and on Thanksgiving, we should appreciate it more than ever.

In the United States, speech may be messy, loud, even infuriating at times, but it remains protected because our founders, shaped by English values, understood that a free society requires free expression. Under Trump, that tradition has been reinforced, not eroded.

Contrast that with Britain today, where police officers now treat online comments as potential crimes, where comedians fear prosecution, and where cultural institutions have handed over their authority to activists who confuse disagreement with hate.

It is staggering that modern Britain — the birthplace of John Milton, Edmund Burke, and George Orwell — has allowed itself to drift into bureaucratised censorship.

America still believes in the individual voice; Britain’s Labour Party believes in supervising it. That alone is something to be grateful for.

I’m also thankful that, unlike the Labour Party and the EU, this country still takes borders seriously. A nation is defined not only by its cultural inheritance but by its willingness to protect the physical line between citizen and non-citizen.

Under Trump, the United States has re-established the principle that border security is not optional, that national sovereignty is not a fringe concept, and that immigration must serve the national interest, not the political vanity of party leaders. Most Americans instinctively understand this.

Britain, meanwhile, is trapped in a cycle of mass immigration without public consent. Starmer’s government treats record-high inflows as something inevitable, and it offers moral lectures in place of coherent policy.

The result is crime and erosion of community stability and national cohesion—problems the British people have long recognised, but their leaders refuse to confront.

Thank God, America, for all its imperfections, in Trump has governing leadership that puts national interest first.

Thanksgiving is also a celebration of abundance, and here again, the contrast is impossible to ignore. Trump’s economic vision is one of growth — real growth — rooted in competitiveness, deregulation, strong industry, energy independence, and the belief that prosperity is something to expand rather than redistribute. The American economy, when allowed to breathe, still has the dynamism to innovate, produce, hire, and lead.

Labour’s Britain, by comparison, operates on the assumption that decline is somehow inevitable. Reeves champions a regulatory agenda that smothers enterprise.

Tax burdens rise, investment flees, and the energy policy resembles a manifesto written by halfwits. It’s a managed decline wrapped in managerial language.

On this side of the Atlantic, we have the good fortune of a government committed to unleashing economic potential rather than constraining it, as well as excellent fiscal stewardship under our rock-solid Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent.

Underlying all of this is a deeper cultural divergence. Under Trump, Americans are encouraged to take pride in their nation —to remember that history is a source of strength, not shame.

Our flag, monuments and traditions are not embarrassments but anchors that hold us steady in turbulent times. Britain, historically the world’s most successful exporter of political and cultural stability, is now run by Labour politicians who behave as though patriotism is a form of extremism.

And so this Thanksgiving, my gratitude has a special clarity. I am thankful for the Anglo-American heritage we share with Britain: our language, our freedoms, our common law, our sense of duty and justice.

But I am even more thankful that America now has a leader who defends that heritage proudly—who understands that a nation must protect its borders, safeguard its liberties, cultivate its prosperity, and tell its story without apology.

God bless Trump, and God save Great Britain from the people currently running her into the ground.