It could never happen here, we all say. A far right dictatorship takes control of America in the form of a convicted felon but complacency tells us we would never elect a lying narcissist like him. We’re better than that. Yet in the Runcorn and Helsby by election and in the mayoralty election in Greater Lincolnshire, along with strong council election performances, it has happened here. Reform UK Ltd, a business-owned by the thoroughly modern Mosley, Nigel Farage, is in the ascendancy. The people have voted and it appears many of them like what Farage is offering: the establishment version of the British National Party, but wearing blazers.
Where America goes first, Britain usually follows. And so it is with politics. That Trump is a compulsive – and repulsive – liar didn’t bother vast swaths of the American electorate. The bigger the lie, the more people loved it. In 2019, we, well not me, elected a lying narcissist as prime minister, the American-born Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. And for a time, Johnson was hugely popular, just as the nicotine-stained man frog is today. A difference, I suppose, is that while Johnson was politically on the right, he did have some liberal sympathies. Trump and his brown-nosing fan boy Farage embrace little by way of liberal thought, but beyond the fake image of projected by the privately-educated rich establishment former city trader Farage lies a British version of Trumpism, a low tax, small state version of our country. And we have bought into it.
People have chosen to vote for the abolition of the NHS. The Greater Lincolnshire mayor supports a British version of Elon Musk’s DOGE, where the entire public sector on which we so depend is ripped apart. They hate equality, they hate minorities, they hate the idea women can be equal. Everything they stand for would make the elite rich richer and the poor and the currently not so poor poorer and let us be crystal clear. People, and plenty of them, like what they see.
Call it a protest vote, call it what you like. Call it a form of revenge against the new Labour government which is having to make a series of unpopular decisions in order to repair the mess left by 14 years of Conservatism, call it a protest against Kemi Badenoch’s pound shop version of Reform UK Ltd, call it what you like, but we have woken up to an alarming possibility. Nigel Farage, who persuaded Britons to make their own country poorer by way of Brexit, to remove their own freedom of movement in Europe and talked in the language of actual fascist parties like the BNP, is, at least in theory, a step nearer to being prime minister. Is it really impossible that the Fagash Fuhrer could lead our country by 2029? Look at the voting patterns and then tell me no.
Sure, it’s a protest vote, too. Nearly ten months after winning power, why hasn’t Labour put the country back together, yet? And it’s a fair argument. With millions still suffering from poverty after the Tory years, NHS waiting lists still high, pot holes everywhere, it’s a long job and people don’t want to wait five years. It doesn’t matter that under a Farage government there would be no NHS, that there would be no money left to fix pot holes after massive tax cuts for the rich and poverty? That’s for poor people to worry about, eh Nige? What last night’s results say is this: millions are open to the possibility of a Trump-type government because last night they voted for it.
The only way for the government, and indeed the remnants of the Tory party and the Lib Dems, is to make our lives better and to make us better off. I’ll leave that to the experts but here’s the thing. Where I live, the far right Reform UK Ltd company came a close second to Labour in the West of England Mayoral election, in the form of the odious Arron Banks, Farage’s biggest financial sponsor over the years. The dangers are alive and present across all demographics. We smugly laugh at Americans for electing Trump, yet here we are voting in large numbers for exactly the same thing.
It could happen here. It has happened here. The USA is under a dictatorship and plenty of people in Britain like what they see. And in the end it will come down to simple things. Do we prefer love to hate? Do we believe we should be kind? If the answers to both are yes, we will be fine. If it’s no, then be afraid. Be very afraid. Let’s end with some words from Michael Rosen:
I sometimes fear that
