Melanie Phillips, I muse as she sits in front of me in a seersucker suit, is strikingly like Margaret Thatcher. Like Ms. Thatcher she speaks with that authoritative British accent that we hear on the BBC and like the “Iron Lady” she’s confident in her message and doesn’t mince her words. Her message when she visited our offices yesterday? That there is a “cultural and moral sickness” afflicting Britain in the failure of its establishment to recognize Islamic extremism for the threat it poses and that unless America acts Britain will be lost, and more potently, America could be next.

That’s the central theme of her latest book, “Londonistan,” which she’s here in the States promoting. “Londonistan” – Britain’s capital, London, mixed with the “istan” from onetime Al Qaeda central, Afghanistan, – is a mocking term that Ms. Phillips thinks was first given to London by the French security services. The French were appalled at Britain’s willingness to tolerate Islamic radicals in London. In the 1990s London was the “most significant hub in Europe” and the “most hospitable place on earth” for Islamic radicals. Moreover, Ms. Phillips says, “some people think Al Qaeda formed as a global movement” in London: The Islamists held conferences there that brought together radicals from across the globe for the first time.

The British allowed this to happen, Ms. Phillips says, because they were more concerned about terrorism coming from Northern Ireland and because they believed that as Britain had “no interests in the Middle East” Islamic radicalism “wouldn’t bite them.” Ignoring radical Islam was also part of what Ms. Phillips terms Britain’s “exaggerated respect for freedom of speech: Today’s dissident is tomorrow’s prime minister” and so it’s “never in Britain’s interest to offend anyone” – as “long as they don’t threaten Britain.”

The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks failed to shake the British establishment as it shook America’s. Rather than realizing that radical Islam is a serious threat, Ms. Phillips says that a “group think” took hold that “global Jihad was rooted in discreet grievances” such as “Israel-Palestine, Chechnya … and America throwing her weight around in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in Arab world.” The British establishment’s solution therefore was to ignore radical Islam and simply try to solve the individual problems, especially the Israel-Palestinian Arab conflict. Once this is done, “everything else will disappear.”

Last year’s London bombings, what Britain calls its “7/7,” produced the same reaction. The establishment refused to consider that “religious fanaticism” was to blame and put the terrorists attacks down to “global grievances.” Britain was targeted because of her troops in Iraq and her close alliance with America. This caused Muslim resentment that in turn caused the terrorist attacks: The attacks were therefore a “protest movement” and not rooted in underlying religious radicalism. And so, still to this day, Ms. Phillips says, there has been no real challenge by the British establishment to the “lies and propaganda at center of Jihad.”

While Prime Minister Blair is someone who “gets it,” Ms. Phillips says he is a “lone voice” and virtually everyone else in the citadels of power – the rest of his government, the police, and the security services – don’t. Not much hope for a country if the prime minister can’t change the establishment’s thinking. Which is why, Ms. Phillips says with a sigh, she’s bringing her book to America.

Ms. Phillips sees America as the last best hope for her country. She’s turning to America to kick-start the debate in Britain. Britain is “paralyzed by multiculturalism and minority rights” which “leads people to say you can’t question a minority or a religion.” Ms. Phillips says that she almost failed to find a publisher for her book in Britain. It went down to the “11th hour and the 59th minute” when a small publisher took it on. With “no Fox News, no conservative talk-radio, no big conservative think tanks,” there is no one to force the establishment to debate the roots of radical Islam.

Americans should care about Britain’s coming “cultural collapse and appeasement” beyond the obvious reasons of helping an ally with a shared heritage. Firstly, Ms. Phillips says, as things stand there is the “likelihood that next prime minister after Mr. Blair won’t be so keen to stand shoulder to shoulder” with the American president. More importantly for America, Britain, Ms. Phillips says, is where our western values – “democracy, liberty, and the rule of law” – originated. Britain still is a “cultural leader.” If she falls there “will be a knock on effect in America and the rest of the western world.” Ms. Phillips says that already some of these British establishment attitudes are heard around America. While she is “writing about Britain” people will “recognize it in America.”

Ms. Phillips is, as readers who follow Britain will know, a celebrity in her own right: She’s a celebrated columnist and author. And she might, if her warnings are heeded, one day be known as a one-person journalistic version of Winston Churchill – a Briton who stood against the tide. Can it be done? Ms. Phillips hopes so. She “doesn’t think anything is (already) lost” or that “defeat is inevitable.” But, she says, history also “teaches that empires fail.” She’s hoping America can once again save Europe.

Mr. Freedman is editor of the online edition of The New York Sun and blogs at www.itshinesforall.com.