The US comedy franchise is just the latest staging post in American cultural and political domination of Britain. We need to get off our knees right now, says our Writer at Large, Neil Mackay

If I were approaching Saturday Night Live’s UK franchise as a critic, then I’d say it was passable. It wasn’t as terrible as many made out, but it wasn’t much fun either. There were moments that made me laugh, and moments that made my toes curl like Twiglets. The best that can be said is that SNL UK was slightly better than Claudia Winkleman’s chat show, which managed to be both chillingly dull and feverishly saccharine simultaneously.

However, I’m not looking at SNL UK through the lens of TV criticism. SNL UK raises far more important issues than whether it’s good entertainment. Indeed, as I watched the show it seemed to symbolise the fears many Britons feel about the domination of America over all aspects of our lives. SNL is just the latest example of America’s creeping colonisation of Britain.

SNL, despite the "UK" branding, is about as British as the Super Bowl. It is created and controlled by Americans and American corporations. Its first host, Tina Fey, is American. In her opening monologue, Fey even joked about the programme being an "American operation". The first sketch riffed on the so-called "Special Relationship". The routine humiliated Keir Starmer and was later clipped and posted on social media by Donald Trump.

Why must Britain import an American satirical franchise to lampoon our own politics? Have we sunk so low culturally and intellectually that we require Americans to tell us when to laugh and what to laugh at? It’s bad enough that the country which once ruled the waves now has no effective navy. But that the nation of Monty Python, Spitting Image, and That Was the Week That Was – the nation which gifted the world such great satirists as Alexander Pope or William Hogarth – cannot come up with its own topical sketch show is, frankly, as pathetic as it is embarrassing.

Why on earth could a British TV network not produce its own satirical series? Do we need Americans to hold our hands on every matter under the sun? It seems so.

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Sometimes you must look at the splinter in your finger to realise you’ve got blood poisoning. SNL appears meaningless: just a dumb Saturday night show to watch drunk in front of the telly. But it is, in truth, another staging post in America’s relentless takeover of Britain.

As Angus Hanton, the author of Vassal State, told me: there are more than 1300 US multinationals in Britain, with annual sales of $836 billion. That money goes to America. It’s the equivalent of £22,000 per British household. US corporate revenues in Britain equal the combined revenues from France, Germany, Italy and Spain. We’re America’s piggy-bank.

When US-owned companies fail here, like Southern Cross care homes, British taxpayers pick up the tab. Don’t be fooled into thinking these multinationals create jobs. Mostly, they’ve just bought up British firms. They haven’t built factories or offices, or hired new staff. Rather, they often make staff redundant. They also “dodge tax at scale”, Hanton explained, so we end up paying more.

Even worse than this corporate takeover, though, is the way America controls the key pillars of 21st century British infrastructure. Financial institutions like Mastercard, Visa or PayPal are American-owned. So when you make a payment, a cut goes to America, not to Britain. Google is American – every search you make profits America. Social media is American-owned – so the very means by which you communicate profits America, and allows Americans to shape our national conversation.

Think of these corporations as the pipes, plumbing, wires and roads of modern life. Every time we use these American-owned fixtures and fittings – which we must to function in today’s world – we pay a US toll.

If you own an American computer or phone, watch Netflix or Disney+, take an Uber, eat at McDonalds, drink Coke, it’s all money in American coffers.

We’re allowing US business – particularly the deeply sinister corporation Palantir –to harvest UK government data on all of us. Its tentacles stretch into the NHS, police, army and now the Financial Conduct Authority.

Britain has been prostituted to American interests.

Yet look at America. The country has chosen a path of barbarism, ignorance and violence. It oppresses its citizens, kills people around the world, and is destroying freedom of the press and freedom of speech. America has attacked the global economy, first with tariffs and now with its illegal Iran war. It has humiliated and insulted Britain and our international allies. It has threatened to undermine our values and way of life. Donald Trump is only acting in a way which accords with the facts when it comes to the true relationship between Britain and America: we’re the slave, America is the master. So Trump behaves as such.

George Fouracres as Keir Starmer in a skit from Saturday Night Live UK (Image: Sky/PA)

We need to wise up, look the truth in the face and start acting accordingly ourselves. We need to build our own alternatives to America’s pipes, plumbing and digital roads. Why can Britain not encourage tech entrepreneurs to create our own versions of Google or Facebook? Why are Brits not using a UK-version of Mastercard? It is infuriating that those who crow loudest about being great British patriots are in fact the most servile towards American domination: Nigel Farage is on his knees to Trump; he’s MAGA’s British pet. If Kemi Badenoch was in power and Washington said jump, she’d likely perform a Fosbury Flop on command. Most of the English press happily embraces Britain’s status as America’s serf and calls for more of the same.

America even controls Britain’s ultimate weapon: the Trident nuclear deterrent. We’re dependent on US design, manufacture and maintenance. That is hard, shaming proof that on the world’s stage we’re America’s auxiliaries. We’re now just loyal colonial troops.

We must get off our damn knees. The world has changed. America isn’t our friend. It is difficult to see America as anything other than an enemy right now. Even if Trump disappeared overnight – even if America elected a living saint – the US can no longer be trusted. We should thank Trump for his cruelty, stupidity and treachery. It is a wake-up call – and we have slept late far too long already.

Neil Mackay is The Herald’s Writer-at-Large. He’s a multi-award-winning investigative journalist, author of both fiction and non-fiction, and a filmmaker and broadcaster. He specialises in intelligence, security, extremism, crime, social affairs, cultural commentary, and foreign and domestic politics.

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