The UK’s Embassy in Washington gently trolled Americans on Independence Day, posting a ‘Fourth of July playlist’ created by faux Spotify user ‘KingGeorge1776’ featuring Player’s 1977 hit ‘Baby Come Back’ playing over and over again. The post also includes the ‘You’ll Be Back’ meme of Hamilton fame.
The viral tweet got over 100,000 likes and more than 13,000 retweets, and spawned a host of replies poking equally inoffensive fun at the Embassy, King George, and Brits in general.
The replies quickly turned into a political debate about which country has become more of a “mess” since the heady days of 1776. Some users also reminded Britain about the upcoming Scotland independence referendum, suggesting the country should focus on that before eyeing longingly at its former American colonies.
US officials often call Britain as America’s closest ally, with the two countries attacking Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya together in the 2000s and early 2010s, and helping to topple Ukraine’s government in 2014, leading to the current crisis with Russia over that country.
Despite their close friendship, forged by alliances going back to World War I, World War II and the Cold War, American independence from the British Empire can be a touchy subject for people from both nations, particularly after they’ve had one drink too many, amid mutual recriminations over cruelty by both sides during the American Revolutionary War of 1775-1783, the War of 1812 – during which Brits burned down the White House, and the American Civil War, in which London offered limited support for the Confederacy. The US kept up-to-date military plans to invade Canada, a British dependency, until the eve of World War II, with Canada drafting similar plans up to the 1920s.