“It could never happen over here.” If I had a quid for every time I’d heard someone use these words when talking about the second Donald Trump presidency I’d have a few quid. We’ve had a few useless prime ministers for sure, goes the argument, but nothing like this. Normally, what happens first in America eventually arrives here. Coca Cola, McDonalds, Trick or Treat, Black Friday are all examples, but actually we have already been through what America is going through in certain specific ways. One is called Brexit.
It is not a coincidence that the only major UK politician who was invited to attend Trump’s inauguration in February was Boris Johnson. A liar, a narcissist, a charlatan; potentially a Russian asset. While Johnson was not initially behind the drive to take the UK out of Europe, once he calculated that Brexit, as it became known, would benefit his own ambitions, he was on the same side of the leader of Britain’s alt right, basically the BNP in blazers, led by all round shyster and fellow narcissist Nigel Farage.
What lay behind Brexit were essentially two main strands of thinking. One was the desire among the super rich to turn Britain into a low tax, small state country. By hollowing out the state and removing public services, like the NHS, and putting up barriers in a kind of Britain first way. We were British and proud. We did not need the rest of the world. We would be self-sufficient. Then, taxes could be slashed, especially for the super rich. Second, there was migration. People were coming over here, stealing our jobs, taking all our houses and inflicting a different way of life upon us. The jobs they were “stealing” it turned out were the ones we Brits didn’t want to do and were in areas where there were simply not enough folk to do them, as in healthcare. Those sodding care workers, emptying grandma’s stoma, feeding her lunch after putting in through a blender. And those doctors carrying out life-saving surgery? Who needs them?
It turned out that when the Europeans stopped coming here, migration increased dramatically, but now it was coming from mainly India, Pakistan and Nigeria. Perhaps those who opposed European migration preferred Commonwealth migration instead? Happy memories of when we had an Empire? Anyway, Brexit, which was sold as reducing migration by the governing party, always the Conservatives from 2010 to 2024, brought it to record levels. Trump doesn’t just want to stop migration: he wants to deport migrants to Guantanamo Bay, where the USA used to send alleged terrorists. Boris Johnson may have missed a trick, there.
Brexit isolated the UK from its allies across the North Sea and then when Trump was first elected on an America first agenda, we were alone. Trump part two has taken us back closer to Europe out of necessity specifically because what is happening in the White House. It is a high octane version of Brexit, as the USA erects barriers to the rest of the world to the detriment not just to itself but to everyone else. Trump’s hatchet man, the Nazi saluting Ketamine abuser Elon Musk, is dismantling the US state to help further enrich himself. This is what a low tax small state looks like.
Boris Johnson’s terrible Brexit deal has damaged vast swathes of the country and made it poorer in both the short and especially the long term. There are no tangible benefits – not one – from Brexit, certainly not the nonsense about regaining the sovereignty we never lost. While there is no prospect of rejoining the EU, at least we have a prime minister in Keir Starmer who is navigating his way through the mess left behind and improving the post Brexit arrangements. For the first time since the Brexit vote in 2016, our voice is now being heard again around the world. With the arrival of Trump this is no bad thing.
The current Tory party, so badly led by a hopelessly out of her depth Kemi Badenoch, drove into the ditch and has merely dug itself deeper following their huge electoral defeat last year. Thoroughly modern (Oswald) Mosley, Nigel Farage ploughs a populist furrow on the far right but he is only a disruptor, drawing on the culture wars that have blighted our country for over a decade. He may even succeed with his bordering on fascism tactics, not least because both he and much of the pro Brexit movement have always danced with the Russian bear from the safety of the middle distance. That Farage in particular has so closely aligned himself with pro Putin Trump should alarm us all.
Of course, America is isolationism on steroids, compared with that attempted by the Brexit campaigners, which was still alarming enough. But it’s basically two cheeks of the same arse, one slightly bigger than the other. And we should not talk patronisingly to Americans who are only engaged on the same painful journey we have been on.
In the 21st century, pretty well everything is connected. It’s either a version of North Korea, China, fascist Russia or its closer ties with our genuine allies, who these days, may not include America.
Labour’s landslide victory, barely eight months ago, has at least prevented us for the foreseeable future from a further dalliance with isolationism and a kind of Make Britain Great Again and in rebuilding our country, after the setbacks of recent past, we perhaps do have the chance to resume our proud position in the world.
We showed with Brexit that we can trash our country, as Trump’s MAGA is doing across the pond. There’s an old saying that you should “keep your friends close and your enemies closer”. I think it’s probably right, if we are seeking to mend relationships and encouraging our enemies, especially our new enemies, if that is what they are, to step back into the tent. But let’s not pretend we are better than anyone else or, as I said at the start, that what has happened in America can’t happen here. To end where I started, it already has.
