British Writer Tom Leonard: How Britain Became America’s Laughing Stock

To many Americans, Catherine Wieland’s story may sound almost impossible. The 33-year-old from West Sussex claimed that debilitating “anxiety attacks” left her unable to leave home or manage basic tasks, including washing herself. As a result, she was awarded disability benefits worth roughly £700 a month.

Wieland also received Universal Credit while taking advantage of the controversial Motability scheme. The taxpayer-funded programme allows eligible disabled people to lease new vehicles after paying a relatively small deposit; in her case, the car was a brand-new BMW.

Yet during the two-and-a-half years in which she claimed Personal Independence Payments, Wieland attended 76 beauty appointments and visited 60 pubs, clubs and restaurants. She also travelled overseas, flying to Cancun in Mexico, where she shared photographs of herself zip-lining and surfing.

Wieland was convicted of benefit fraud in March. She received a suspended sentence and was ordered to repay £23,662 to the taxpayer.

Her case attracted relatively little attention in Britain, where allegations of benefit fraud and abuse of the welfare system have become a familiar feature of public debate.

This week, however, Wieland’s story appeared on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, America’s biggest-selling newspaper, beneath a stark headline: “The Welfare State is Crushing Britain.”

The Journal is not alone. Hardly a week now passes without prominent figures in the American media highlighting what they see as a deepening crisis across the Atlantic.

Despite the chaos and alleged corruption surrounding the Trump administration, commentators, politicians, podcasters and news organisations on both the American Left and Right have increasingly portrayed Britain as a country in something approaching terminal decline.

When I moved to New York more than 20 years ago, Britain was generally viewed in the United States—particularly among liberals—as a stable and sensible country, whether governed by Labour or the Conservatives. It is difficult to recall a time when America’s view of its British ally was so bleak.

Critics point to the UK’s weak economic growth and expanding welfare bill, but also to what they describe as hypocrisy over free speech, underfunded Armed Forces and the government’s failure to tackle small-boat crossings and mass immigration more broadly.

Donald Trump had little enthusiasm for Labour governments even before Keir Starmer refused to support the President’s military misadventures in Iran. Trump sharply dismissed the former prime minister as “not Winston Churchill” and said the so-called “special relationship” was “not what it was”.

In reality, Trump’s criticism now reflects the views of millions of Americans. In the past, Democratic friends would often dismiss the latest Maga controversy and reassure me that, at least, Britain was spared the kind of political turmoil unfolding in the United States.

That is no longer the case. Increasingly, Americans believe they understand all too well what their British counterparts are facing.

As self-described socialists such as New York mayor Zohran Mamdani and US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gain influence within the Democratic Party and threaten to pull it further to the Left, Republicans have increasingly presented Britain as a warning about what could happen if Democrats gain control of the United States.

At the heart of that argument are costly welfare payments—anathema to many Americans who favour self-reliance, limited government and lower taxes.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the number of working-age people in Britain claiming sickness or disability benefits has climbed to 4.7 million, increasing faster than in any other Western country. The equivalent figure in the United States is 10.6 million, but America has five times Britain’s population and a substantially stronger economy.

American scrutiny of Britain’s poor economic performance has also been growing for some time. In June, the liberal Atlantic magazine published an extensive investigation into how Britain “became as poor as Mississippi”, describing the country as “a case study in self-sabotage”.

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Output per person, a crucial measure of economic wellbeing, had slumped to the point that Britain’s was now only just above that of America’s most impoverished state, the Atlantic noted, adding: ‘Who broke Britain? Someone – or something – must have.’

Predictably, Brexit got some of the blame but the article’s American author (whose train out of London, needless to say, broke down) went on to note witheringly that the rapid succession of prime ministers ‘do not seem to be getting more talented over time’. Ultimately, the Atlantic concluded, the British themselves broke Britain.

Defence is another crucial issue. Back in March, many patriotic Americans were appalled at Britain’s underwhelming military response to a drone attack on a UK airbase in Cyprus. Type 45 destroyer HMS Dragon took a week to be taken out of dry dock and get to the Mediterranean – only to develop power and propulsion problems on the way.

‘What happened to Britain’s Royal Navy?’ pondered a headline in the Washington Times.

Military sources in the US capital later revealed that America had ‘long-standing’ concerns about the UK’s ability to send warships to sea in an emergency.

Earlier this month, the sudden decision to withdraw all its heavy bombers from RAF Fairford after the confused response to a suspected Iran-backed terror plot suggested it wasn’t just Britain’s fleet but also its air bases that are worrying our American allies.

Britain’s respect, or lack of it, for free speech – a freedom that Americans take very seriously – was back in the news only last week.

The announcement that the UK’s ‘police watchdog’ had found that comedy writer Graham Linehan may have been unfairly arrested at Heathrow Airport over remarks about trans issues on social media will have stirred memories of an incident that struck many Americans at the time as invidious.

Linehan’s original arrest in September last year created shockwaves in the US where many argued that it made a mockery of then Starmer’s blase assurance to his Oval Office hosts a few months earlier that ‘we’ve had free speech for a very, very long time in the United Kingdom, and it will last for a very, very long time’.

He gave this assurance shortly after Trump’s vice-president JD Vance attended the Munich Security Conference and rattled off various cases in the UK that he said proved free speech was ‘in retreat’ there.

The US State Department subsequently published a report claiming that human rights in Britain have ‘worsened’ over the past year, citing ‘serious restrictions’ on free speech.

The Linehan arrest rather bore out what the Trump administration had been saying.

A point reiterated by an influential historian and conservative commentator, Michael Barone, made clear days later in a widely-syndicated column headlined: ‘Britain, Land of the Unfree’.

‘Surely, many Americans reading this must be thinking this was some terrible mistake. A one-off as the British might say,’ said Barone of Linehan’s jaw-dropping treatment. ‘Actually not. It’s more like standard operating procedure.’

Barone also criticised UK officialdom’s controversial crackdown on displays of the St George’s flag – a policy that would be anathema in the US, where towns compete to fly the biggest Stars and Stripes.

It was part of a silencing of dissent over immigration, he said, that had led to the widespread rejection of both Labour and Conservative parties in favour of the more openly patriotic Reform.

Under Trump, on the other hand, America has succeeded in stemming the flood of illegal migrants over the Mexican border that got under way during the Democrats’ administration.

Consequently, Britain’s continued failure to stop small boats crossing the Channel – a policing operation covering a border a fraction of the nearly 2,000-mile-long US-Mexico boundary – is an issue that I have found ordinary Americans sometimes find puzzling.

Lacking even the excuse that it has Donald Trump in charge, Britain’s waning fortunes will continue to distract and alarm my friends and neighbours here – who don’t even need to try to take a British train to know that something’s gone badly wrong across the pond.