How should the UK celebrate 250 years of American independence?

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The writer is director of the Victoria and Albert Museum

The call has gone out for ideas for the UK to celebrate next year’s 250th anniversary of the 1776 Declaration of Independence. Following the successful state visit of US President Donald Trump to the UK this year, but with an ever-widening ideological rift between Europe and America, the need for a common Atlanticist sentiment seems more urgent than ever. It is only a few weeks since the Pentagon’s new national security strategy gleefully warned of “civilizational erasure” on this continent.

On the face of it, the 1776-2026 commemoration is a hard sell for the Anglo-American fraternity. The declaration — a list of terrible things done to the colonists by King George III — concludes by announcing the Thirteen Colonies will henceforth be “absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is, and ought to be, totally dissolved”. 

What first inspired Jefferson, Franklin, Adams and the founding fathers was a commitment to constitutionalism and the liberalism of John Locke (unless you were Black). Together with 18th-century British radicals, they regarded the King as wilfully undermining the Magna Carta freedoms of British subjects. Contempt for parliament, arbitrary governance and excessive taxation was a standing betrayal of the 1688 Glorious Revolution and its careful balance of powers. So, the rule of law rather than the whim of monarchs was to be the touchstone of the new American republic, with strong checks and balances to prevent executive over-reach. 

By contrast, in DC today, the ideals of 1776 don’t seem in favour; performances of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical Hamilton in the Obama White House are a distant memory.

Instead there is a policy to concentrate power within the presidency and, with that, the deployment of state sanction against political opponents. Trump enjoys posting memes of himself wearing a crown, while the Oval Office boasts more gold leaf than the Buckingham Palace throne room. Feeling the vibe, anti-Trump protesters coalesce under a very 1776 banner: “No Kings. No Tyrants.” 

What spurred the revolutionaries on was also a distaste for the Hanoverian Court: that confluence of jobbery, bribery and colonial self-enrichment. The newly independent Thirteen Colonies were to be a republic of virtue, cleansed of family patronage and cronies holding office. What the 1776 pioneers would have made of the proximity of the Trump family enterprise to official diplomatic and government business is not hard to guess. 

Underpinning the constitutional break was a commitment to free thinking, religious liberty and a rational culture of inquiry. In the 1790s, for instance, the chemist Joseph Priestley fled reactionary mobs in Birmingham for the religious and intellectual freedom promised by America. Yet now, with references to man-made carbon emissions deleted from official US data and anti-vaccine ideologies central to Robert F Kennedy Jr’s agenda as health secretary, the scientific rigour of a Benjamin Franklin is noticeably absent. 

But we have to deal with the world as it is, and not, like Hanoverian predecessors — sneer at the legitimate and clear decision of the American people in pursuing their political destiny. So, what can we work with? 

Commerce was always critical to the Atlantic relationship. Right up to the revolution, there flourished an “empire of goods” connecting Britain and the eastern seaboard in a shared colonial culture. A solid US trade deal has finally been reached, with extra growth clearly possible across tech, finance, pharmaceuticals and film (if the tariffs don’t reappear). We can add to this the rich ties that continue to thrive between our legal professions, architecture industry, armed forces and universities.

Then there is literary culture. In his Windsor Castle speech, Trump spoke unexpectedly of his admiration for “Shakespeare and Dickens and Tolkien and Lewis, Orwell and Kipling”. British actors, directors and authors are all superb ambassadors for Anglo-American cultural understanding; next year the National Theatre and Royal Shakespeare Company will tour both Hamlet and Hamnet across the US.

If not quite ready in time for 1776, one of our greatest gifts to the world is rules-based ball sports; 2026 sees America, alongside Canada and Mexico, hosting football’s World Cup — a superb opportunity to boost affinity for soccer, and the UK Premier League, in the US.

But, ironically, the one event next year that might truly subvert the 250th commemorations of American independence is a visit by King Charles III. What would poor Tom Paine think?