History is the march of folly and far too many of my countrymen are hearkening to a drumbeat which would lead us to disaster. On Tuesday several of our newspapers led with variations of the same headline: ‘Trump: cut tax to beat Farage.’ This is idiotic counsel, given the state of Britain’s public finances. I would have thought the way to beat populism was not by emulating its idiocies but by prudent, cautious, sensible management of a nation tired of liars.
If Donald Trump teaches us anything, it is how to ruin a great nation. Far more useful than parroting the US President’s delusions would be telling the British people more than they are currently permitted to read about his manic conduct of office. The bullying of the Fed chair Jerome Powell, who is trying to maintain the integrity of the currency; the campaign against federal judges seeking to defend the rule of law; the cancellation of Voice of America and public broadcast funding which protect genuinely free speech; the attacks on independent universities who uphold free inquiry; the brutal removal of immigrants to foreign prisons devoid of human rights which tramples over the memory of Ellis Island welcoming the poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free; the demolition of climate change research which weakens America’s global leadership; the economic innumeracy of tariffs which shred the US’s decades-long tradition of freer trade; the assault on science-based health policies which undermine the country’s moral standing; and the indulgence of Israel’s persecution of the Gazans which alienates old allies. It is not morning again in America, but the twilight of all that made it great.
Faced with this folly, what do our leaders do? We are not Greeks to their Romans, we just offer tribute to the barbarians. It was cringe-making to see Keir Starmer received by Trump as a supplicant, ascending the steps of the President’s Scottish palace at Turnberry to be harangued about the shortcomings of Britain from wind turbines to migrant boats. As John of Gaunt said in Richard II, our country ‘hath made a shameful conquest of itself’.
Back in the days when Boris Johnson was ascendant and Trump in his first term, Professor Sir Michael Howard OM, the wisest man I have ever known, said to me fiercely: ‘We must never allow ourselves to suppose that all this is normal. Populism is a perversion of democracy, which will do incalculable harm.’
Michael is now nearly six years dead, and Trump’s America has become an uglier place than he ever anticipated. Another fine historian, Margaret MacMillan, last week published a lacerating article in Foreign Affairs, cataloguing Trump’s insults heaped upon countries around the world. She observes that it is hard to think of a precedent for such wilful destruction of alliances.
Here is a man who threatens to seize Greenland, has launched an economic assault on Canada and keeps Ukraine dangling by a thread because of his intermittent infatuation with Russia’s Vladimir Putin. He is making America hated by its former friends, and he does not care. But we should.
The President succeeds because many governments think him capable of anything if thwarted
This week’s announcement of an EU-US trade deal represents a surrender by Brussels to Trump’s bullying, the acceptance of 15 per cent tariffs not because such an outcome represents fair dealing, but for fear of much worse. Trump has far outdone Richard Nixon’s ‘Madman’ gambit against Hanoi. Nixon failed because the North Vietnamese believed him rational. Trump succeeds because many governments, including our own, think him capable of anything if thwarted.
And so everywhere we look, those who should be safeguarding our independence make a virtue out of obeisance. The secretary–general of Nato in June sent a message to the US President such as the Emperor Caligula might have thought extravagant in its flattery. This grovel may have preserved the alliance and the precarious arms supply chain to Ukraine for now. But what was once an alliance built on shared values has become a protection racket, and one in which we collude. The King has been persuaded to invite Trump for a state visit that vanishingly few British people welcome. But, like a Sicilian family offering up its daughters, this is supposed to buy us the Don’s goodwill.
Starmer may feel that is his, reluctant, responsibility. The rest of us, however, have a different duty – to the truth. Trump is the most disreputable US president in history. His arbitrary rule, indifference to legality or morality and institutionalised deceits shame the country of Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, Lincoln, Roosevelt and Reagan. The nation which was once the arsenal of democracy is in danger of becoming its graveyard.
‘It was expensive but worth it.’
Turnberry should have been the occasion to hold Trump to account for all this, and so much more. But instead it was a festival of fawning. Why was almost nothing said about the financial corruption woven into this presidency? Here was Trump using his public office to advertise the expansion of his property empire. No previous incumbent has sought to enrich himself and his family while in office on the billion-dollar scale of Trump. Anne Applebaum in her book Auto-cracy Inc. observes that once upon a time dictators sought to explain or excuse their personal excesses. Now Trump makes them the purpose of his administration.
Those of us who study US history and have met many great American public servants respect the quality and seriousness of purpose that have characterised most. Today such people have been replaced by bunglers whose only virtue is loyalty to their employer.
Trump rules by menace and foul-mouthed abuse, reflected in deranged posts on his website Truth Social. It is frightening to behold the number of powerful interests, from media tycoons to banks and law firms, who roll over in his path and write their cheques, in fear of his wrath should they defy him.
There may appear to be nothing that we or any other nation can do to control this extraordinary man who is bereft of compassion, decency and dignity. But we can at least keep our own dignity and defend our own democracy by rehearsing to each other what Trump is and does. When others fall into line as Trump marches through the ruins, we can, and should, conscientiously object.