BORIS JOHNSON: Americans know freeloading after they see it – and ours cannot go on for ever

There’s something that has been bugging me over the last few days. We are here in Texas – somewhere up in the hills not far from San Antonio and it’s just stunning.

The temperatures are balmy. There is a beautiful clean river to swim in and all around us are nature trails and riverside bars and places where you can hire kayaks and tubes.

And yet for all the attractions and amenities there is one thing missing from the gorgeous primeval American landscape – and that is other members of the human race.

We drive through oak-forested limestone gorges, past deserted riverside benches and unused barbecues to whole lakes that are unruffled by a single swimmer. There is something almost post-apocalyptic about the sheer absence of other people.

Where is everybody? I wonder. If this were Britain – with temperatures in the 30s, with fresh cool water so clean you could drink it – the place would be positively pullulating. And then I remember one of the key differences between us Europeans and our American friends. There is a simple reason why the RV parks (that’s caravan parks to you and me) are so empty and the hiking trails so deserted and it is not that the US has been afflicted by some new contagious disease. The governor of Texas has not placed everyone in lockdown.

The place is quiet because the Americans are all still at work. This is not the holidays – and as I stare at the shuttered rib shacks, I can understand some of that curious Euro-bashing that you are starting to hear from American politicians.

The news over here has been dominated by a leaked conversation on Signal, in which various members of the Trump administration discussed a forthcoming US mission to bomb the Houthis in Yemen and stop their attacks on Red Sea shipping.

This would be a boon to the world, since the Houthi terrorist disruption has been terrible – forcing ships to go all the way round the Cape of Good Hope.

There was only one downside to the operation, it seemed, from the chat. Clearing the Red Sea shipping lanes would disproportionately benefit European rather than American trade. It would therefore be yet another gratuitous act of US generosity to us – the ‘freeloading’ Europeans.

Well, there has been some understandable outrage – especially from members of UK Armed Forces. Were we ‘freeloading’, when we went with the US into Iraq? Were they ‘freeloaders’, those brave 457 British troops who lost their lives in Afghanistan, side by side with the Americans?

Across the continent, politicians and commentators have recoiled at the suggestion. To call us ‘freeloaders’, say the Europeans, is cruel, spiteful, dismissive and wrong.

Well, I don’t wish to inflame things any further, but here in these lovely and eerily deserted Texan resorts, I can kind of see how Americans might feel.

The American worker takes far less holiday than his or her European counterparts. In the US the average private sector worker gets between ten and 15 days of paid leave per year. We Europeans take twice as much, about 30 days.

Workers in Britain have all sorts of luxuries and protections of a kind that are simply unknown to American capitalism.

If we are feeling ill, we have statutory sick pay of £116.75 per week for 28 weeks. If we have a baby, we have 39 weeks paid maternity leave for mothers and two weeks for fathers.

We have rules against unfair dismissal and cradle to grave healthcare free at the point of use.

The Americans have nothing of the kind. There is no federal statutory requirement for a single day of sick pay or maternity leave, let alone paternity leave. There is nothing to stop your boss firing you more or less at will – in fact the current President made a hit TV show that revolved around this brutal and arbitrary ritual.

As for healthcare, there is no universal state service free at the point of use. You either get insurance through work or if you are poor enough to qualify you get publicly funded Medicaid.

My point is not that one system is morally or socially or economically better than another – though I am sure readers will have their views. For driving thrift, enterprise, innovation and wealth creation the American way is currently astonishing and triumphant – with the poorest parts of Mississippi now on a par with France.

My point is that not everyone here is by any means rich.

They work hard to pay for their ginormous pick-up trucks and outsize steaks. Their patriotism is obvious in the Stars and Stripes on every porch – on their very bikini bottoms. Their churches are ubiquitous.

They are kind, cheery, courteous – and their whole ethic, their approach to life, is unlike ours in Europe. They don’t dare to take a few extra days holiday to go tubing on the river – beautiful though it now is – because they simply could not afford to be let go from their job.

They do not have the cushion that we have in Europe.

All of which makes them prey to irritation if they are told – as they now are, regularly, that they are paying more in tax for the defence of ‘Yurp’ than the freeloading Europeans are paying themselves. Which in truth they are. The US defence budget is the thick end of a trillion dollars a year, more than 12 times the UK defence budget, even though the US population is only about five times bigger than ours. The US allocates about 3.5 per cent of its GDP to defence while the UK spends about 2.3 per cent.

Long after the end of the Cold War, the US is still spending way over $100billion a year just on keeping forces and missiles in Europe – and the American voter has noticed.

We need America to be the hegemonic power of the Western world, and we need America to stick up for freedom and democracy, especially in Ukraine.

We must not be deluded into thinking we can create some European alternative defence pillar, as a substitute for Nato.

Who would lead such a thing? France? Britain? Germany? You only have to ask the question to see the problem.

We Europeans have to keep the Western alliance together and yet answer the basic charge of freeloading. There is only one good way to get the US to take the defence of Europe seriously – and that is to show that we take it seriously ourselves.

The Government has made a start in increasing defence spending, but it is only a start, and nothing like enough. We need to look hard at what works in America and think how we could change our economic model to unleash comparable growth.

We need to stop adding taxes, as Labour is doing, and cancel crazy new employment laws such as the Bill now going through Parliament.

The Americans can see the differences in our defence spending.

They can see the difference in the social and welfare protections. They can see that we are basically relying on their energy and thrift.

They know freeloading when they see it – and it can’t go on for ever.