If you are expecting to find an in-depth analysis of what happened in the White House yesterday, when actual fascist and Vladimir Putin appeaser Donald Trump and his pet skunk JD Vance launched an obscene attack on Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy, it’s obvious that no one in their right mind would look first at this blog. This is especially true today when my social media timelines have lit up, demanding that King Brian, the government really, should immediately withdraw Trump’s invitation to a state visit. Knees are jerking everywhere, the need for calm minds has dissipated. It’s time to stand with the Europe we voted to leave behind in 2016 and isolate America. Okay. I get that. But what do we all mean by that and where would it take us?
Trump’s meetings with Emmanuel Macron, Keir Starmer and finally Volodymyr Zelenskyy were clearly coordinated this side of the pond, partly I suspect to appeal to the less psychopathic nature of Donald Trump, to minimise the damage between Europe and America because it matters. And it matters in all sorts of ways.
Economically, it’s vital. According to the Department of Trade: ‘Total trade in goods and services (exports plus imports) between the UK and United States was £294.1 billion in the four quarters to the end of Q3 2024, a decrease of 2.3% or £6.8 billion in current prices from the four quarters to the end of Q3 2023.’ Click here if you want more in depth stuff. And there’s more, much more, that some kind of fissure would affect and damage.
Our ‘intelligence’ comes from the USA. Do we kick out their diplomatic staff while they kick ours out? Kick the USA out of NATO? Put up a resolution to the United Nations? Stop flogging US airlines European planes? Ban McDonalds? Christ, our nuclear deterrent, Trident, is leased from the USA. Where does it all end? Answer: it doesn’t.
The choices are blunt and very simple. We either go in two-footed with studs raised or we seek to get the best of a bad deal.
You could argue – and I certainly would – that it’s okay for old codgers like me to suggest blowing up vast swathes of our own economy in revenge attack against this most unhinged of presidents. It’s not our jobs that would be at stake, is it? But it’s our children’s jobs and lives that may be affected in a de facto trade war and we would all be worse off. Politics is a very ugly business at times, never worse than it is today.
The future, with an increasingly isolationist America, is going to be about damage limitation, probably the future right up to the next presidential elections in 2028. Of course we need closer relations with Europe, after the disaster of Brexit in 2016, which was the stuff of dreams for Putin. And that will happen. However, it will undoubtedly come down to Americans themselves to untangle the mess they have created in the coming years by electing Trump in the first place.
As for King Brian’s invitation to Trump, that can be kicked down the road for as long as we want it to, perhaps using it as some sort of leverage to influence the ultimate narcissist in doing the right thing by its allies, including us and of course Ukraine.
Zelenskyy himself believes, or at least hopes, that his country’s relationship with America can be retrieved, despite yesterday’s carnage and if he feels that way, than who am I to argue?
I am not at all surprised by the early days of Trump’s second term. He is only doing what he said he would do and we will have to live with that and manage the situation as best we can. And if nothing else, it is a warning to all of us what happens when a country falls prey to the far right, as we are leaning towards with the rise of Trump’s best pal Nigel Farage and his pals in the illiberal elite.
If we end up choosing the same road as America, as we already did with Brexit, let’s not pretend we weren’t warned.
