The mayor of London, Boris Johnson. Dear Mayor: Please forgive the use of a leading article with which to extend this invitation, but we’d hoped that by now someone would have beckoned you to come to America to speak of the Brexit. With the rapidly approaching referendum this is the moment for someone in the van of the campaign for Britain’s independence to explain to us Yanks what the stakes are for a free Britain — and what the opportunity is for America.

So if no one else is going to extend this invitation, the Sun is happy to do it — and warmly. Who better to come here than, in Your Honor (as we address mayors here in America), the newspaperman-turned-mayor-turned-member-of-Parliament who has so courageously broken with the Tory leadership and emerged with the camp that will vote to withdraw from the European Union? It’s rare that a promising politician takes this kind of gamble for principle.

Regular readers of these columns will know that the Sun is one of the few publications on this side of the pond that favors a Britain that is fully independent of the statists in Brussels. Our sense of the situation is that Europe has plunged way past the red-lines that Prime Minister Thatcher laid down in 1988 at Bruges, Belgium, where she spoke of how Britain had not “rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain,” only to see them “re-imposed at a European level” via a super-state in Brussels.

The editor of the Sun, in the oarlocks of whose galley we’ve fixed our pens, keeps rattling on about how you reached your conclusions in respect of the European Union by the same method he did — namely, covering Brussels for a newspaper. The kind of report you could make here in America would be just the thing, in our view, to awaken the Republican Party to the inanity — insanity, even — of the Democrats warning Britain off independence.

Our role can be only journalistic. We’d be happy to host, on ground rules you establish, a small editorial dinner with a few of the editors around town. We’d leave it to your own camarilla to contact the Republican candidates with whom you might make common cause on British independence. As you are no doubt aware, President Obama has warned Britain that its relations with America would be hurt were Britain to withdraw from the European Union.

Yet our sense of the situation is that Mr. Obama’s view is not shared by the Republicans. Both Senators Cruz and Rubio have said as much, and it’s hard to imagine that any Republican administration (including one led by Donald Trump) would be averse to setting up — if Britain opts for Brexit — bilateral trade agreements with Britain. We understand Mr. Obama has sent word that he would not be open to that. This only underscores the timeliness of your visit.

Our mutual friend Conrad Black cautions us that America hasn’t lately evinced much for Britain (or any other nation) to bet on in expanding the special relationship. We wouldn’t gainsay the point. But we expect he’d also see the current era of appeasement as an anomaly, much as labor and socialistic rule has occasionally been in Britain. We comprehend that neither he nor you needs the Sun to underscore that one of the things that Reagan and Thatcher demonstrated is how quickly, with the right policies, things can be turned around.

New York happens to be full of wonderful venues for a major public speech (Madison Square Garden, Barclay’s Center, Arthur Ashe Stadium), but be careful. We understand that, having been born here in New York, you’re technically a natural born American citizen. Our own equivalent of the Conservative Party is in such flux here just right at the moment that you’ll want to take care that while you’re maneuvering to lead Britain you don’t simultaneously get nominated for president of America. In any event, we look forward to the possibility of welcoming you to town.