‘The time for collusion, good chap politics and meekness is over’
The formulation of the US constitution made America a beacon of democracy, helping to codify standards of truth, integrity, and humanity. These standards are used to contain politicians, however rogue, devious or mad.
But, as Trump’s second presidency looms, these political responsibilities have vaporised. We find ourselves in a dark place where a global superpower and special friend to the UK has uncoupled itself from the law, honesty, accountability and moral constraints.
We gaze blinking in astonishment at the prospect of the first ever insurrectionist felon with 34 convictions to his name, leading, not some remote small state, but the world’s most powerful modern democracy, together with his deranged, slash-and-burn henchman, Musk, and a sorry circus of dangerous cranks and sycophants.
This cabal has exchanged the rule of law for a macho, tyrannical, mafia oligarchy. There was sufficient evidence to convict Trump of defrauding the US and Musk’s $1million-a-day sweepstake almost certainly broke US electoral law. But the offenders are now immune from prosecution. Trump’s tariff plan is primarily a punitive stick to beat, bribe and coerce other nations into submission. His deportation plans parade brute prowess and excite new standards of cruelty amongst the world’s far-right anti-immigrant governments. The loathsome faces of misogyny and racism are ‘hip’ again.
It’s hard to convey, regarding Roe vs Wade, for example, how it feels to learn that women’s rights over their own bodies are back in question. The news had a dreamlike quality in which long-term stable realities suddenly vanish, and you wake to find you are still in the 1950’s. Trump’s inauguration is deeply troubling for many white, middle-class males; for vulnerable groups, the prospect is terrifying.
Trumpworld feels like a violation of modern democracy’s most painstakingly embedded and cherished values. As liberal progressives, we find ourselves ushered into a corner, to be gloated over by the muscle-flexing ‘bros and bruvs’ of the US’s ghastly new pantomime politics. A thesis could certainly be written on Trump’s ‘second coming’ as a response to the ‘modern crisis of masculinity’.
Woke hunting
Trump’s cabal also has a vast tech and financial ability to apply their agenda where they like. Not content to plunge their own country backwards morally, medically and economically, Musk, Trump’s alter ego, is hellbent on foisting his vision on other nations.
Commentators have expressed bewilderment over Musk’s keen interest in UK politics. They conclude that it’s either for financial reasons, because he’s mad, or for mischievous sport. But they are behind the curve. There is financial benefit for Musk in, for example, boosting his Tesla empire. But his dominant motive for interfering with other countries is to pursue an extreme right political ideology, to destroy the woke mind virus wherever it resides, and to bring down any liberal institution or party that obstructs this mission.
He is talking up the AfD because he sees Germany as ripe for a shift towards the regressive, populist world view he espouses; and he’s running a protracted aggressive hate campaign against Labour because he perceives the UK as a stubborn outpost of centre-left woke values blocking the forward march of his ideology. If Musk proves too much even for Trump, tech bros Zuckerberg and Bezos are in the wings. Nor should we read much into Musk’s -35 approval rating in the UK. What’s relevant is not his personal likeability but the efficacy of the online content he can orchestrate.
All the wrong reactions?
Responses to the cataclysm of Trump’s imminent presidency are not ones to be especially proud of. We are witnessing opportunism and appeasement, frequently combined, from politicians, press and commentators. Commission president Ursula von der Leyen was, as Ian Dunt observes, “cryptic, equivocal and tortured” about Trump’s inauguration, saying “The EU will always protect the integrity of our democracies … We look forward to a positive engagement with the incoming US Administration, based on our common values and shared interests.”
Zuckerberg’s decision to remove regulatory data checking on his social media platforms combines appeasement and opportunism. It enables him to escape Trump’s jail threat whilst signalling his willingness to join the Trump / Musk post-truth fraternity in return for perks. The same double motive applies to the speedy ‘falling into line’ of US legacy press such as the Washington Post.
There is also a sense of political apocalypse. We’re now in a Trumpesque ‘anything goes’ mindset with political restraint abandoned. Everyone’s cashing in on the new permission to ‘try it on’. It’s sometimes funny, like Truss’s wild litigious stab at Starmer with a court letter to ‘cease and desist’ from accusing her of crashing the economy, and Daily Mail writer, Richard Littlejohn, inviting Trump to buy Britain instead of Greenland.
Musk spreading
But the new freedom is predominantly sinister. Robert Jenrick has been authorised rather than radicalised. His comment that “migrants with medieval attitudes to women should be barred from Britain” places him squarely in Enoch Powell territory.
Jenrick is playing the same game here as Musk whose description of the MP Jess Phillips as a “rape genocide apologist”, was seen 43 million times. Jenrick is no more a feminist than Musk is a children’s champion. Both are mining UK political issues for anti-Labour ammunition. They know that by attaching their racist tropes (immigrants as medieval rapists) to legitimate themes (women’s equality / the protection of minors) they’ll garner more sympathetic attention.
Badenoch herself has failed to condemn this flow of extravagant viciousness from Musk, her own shadow justice secretary, and other party members. The Tories are now furiously out-performing Reform at racist dog-whistling and the old party centre-ground stands vacant.
Meanwhile, Musk drags the UK Overton window ever further right by pushing rhetoric that makes Farage look moderate, a process that’s ultimately helpful to them both. Musk is effectively firing on Labour from a helicopter whilst enjoying our anxious preoccupation with his threatened donation to Reform. His UK plans don’t depend on donations since, even without them, he has the strategic capability to far outdo the UK’s water companies, metaphorically speaking, in flooding the nation with online excrement.
Kissing the ring
The Trump cabal has Labour over a barrel. Starmer rightly defended Jess Phillips against Musk’s heinous attacks. But Labour is in a highly compromised position. First, it is scared to condemn Musk too explicitly for fear of becoming a target, overlooking that it already is.
Second, the treasury has been unable, so far, to conjure the growth it promised. Ideally, the government would bid for closer trading relationships with the EU to help boost growth and mitigate economic volatility caused by Trump’s policies. But, if Trump objects to closer UK / EU relations, this could defeat the object by triggering a tariff punishment.
Also, Musk has the perfect weapon for fulfilling his mission to depose Labour. If he can persuade Trump to impose tariffs on the UK, this would cripple Labour’s growth plans and hence prevent the party delivering on its promises to an already deeply sceptical electorate.
This straight win for Musk depends on whether he continues to have Trump’s ear. But since it promises an outcome in which the UK acquires a party closer to Trump’s own image, perhaps Reform, then it could be attractive for both. We may only be able to escape our tariff fate by accepting a poor or harmful deal. Alternatively, appealing to Trump’s longstanding fondness for our royalty, perhaps by offering him a selfie wearing the crown jewels or a gold bust of his youthful self at Buckingham Palace, might swing it. Given Trump’s strong streak of childish narcissism, these proposals are more serious than they might sound.
Disappearing red lines
Appeasement also involves normalisation. The UK’s trading partnership and nuclear agreements with the US determine the nature of our continuing relationship with the Trump presidency. Consequently, our government is forced to fawn to a monster, to play pretend democracy with a man who trashed his own.
So, our ambassadors go through the motions of treating him as a normal leader, bound by the usual constraints. They make the right noises, minimizing or turning a blind eye to the flagrant lies, the inhumanity and other violations, and dressing up ruthless arm-twisting as ‘negotiation’, all whilst hiding behind a prayer that these contortions are just an anomaly before true democracy resumes. The process of normalisation reminds us that politics lacks red lines and vested, geopolitical interests pip humanity every time.
Meanwhile, the mainstream media feeds on the clickbait value of the Trump cabal’s continuing deviance, whilst governments close their ears to the sound of the planet burning. The LA fires are a grim metaphor, a flaming foretelling of the environmental, social, economic and moral destruction that Trump’s presidency heralds.
Have we learnt anything?
Historically we have been complacent about so much – social media, Putin, Farage, Brexit and Trump’s first and second coming. Our complacency was horribly misplaced in each case. The grovelling appeasement, opportunism and normalisation of the Trump cabal we are now seeing is painful to watch. Trump symbolises the fragility of democracy, a precious principle which now hangs tangled in a web of coercion masterminded by those vast corporate interests to whom, a while back, we stupidly gave complete control.
Trump’s win has done the UK a favour in one way by forcing us to take Farage more seriously. But Labour is currently a sitting, lame duck, under an attack of unprecedented ferocity from the far right, domestically and internationally, also from the new enhanced disinformation capacity of social media platforms, and from its own maleficent press media.
Ideally, Labour’s lesson should be that it must wake up, and form alliances with other UK progressive parties. I want to say the time for collusion, good chap politics and meekness is over. But I only see governments, press and commentators retreating into their bunkers, cowed and set to survival mode for the next four years.
Claire Jones writes and edits for West England Bylines and is co-ordinator for the Oxfordshire branch of the progressive campaign group, Compass
This article was first published in West England Bylines.
Image credit: Gage Skidmore – Creative Commons
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