A VERY senior member of Donald Trump’s Cabinet put it bluntly this week: “You’re about 15 years behind us.”
I was taken aback by how informed the key lieutenant to the President was about exactly what is happening in Britain after a decade and a half of turmoil in America.
GettyIt appears President Trump is pointing the way for the UK[/caption]
GettyKeir Starmer’s Labour and other established political parties are putting their heads in the sand over just quite how angry the public are[/caption]
GettyAs Reform UK surges in the polls — Nigel Farage has said: ‘There’s something happening out there’[/caption]
From raising flags and spraying roundabouts with the Saint George’s Cross, to Essex mums taking to the streets over illegal immigrants foisted on their towns, he was on it.
Add in Reform UK opening up a double-digit lead in the polls and, as the party’s leader Nigel Farage says: “There’s something happening out there.”
This US powerbroker had a familiar sense of deja-vu, after previous events ending with his boss being elected to the White House, twice.
Trump was swept to power on a sea of Make America Great Again hats and flags, and this household name reckons we are ripe for a similar revolution in the UK.
Britain is on trial on the world stage at the moment — and the verdict is not looking good.
Having lived in Washington DC for just over a month now, I am agog at just how poor our reputation is over spending, taxes, free speech, crime and incompetent government of all shades.
The old order crumbles
Given our history, we are a benchmark nation to which others compare their own countries and woes.
There is a morbid fascination with what’s going wrong in the UK — and this week’s arrest of comedy writer Graham Linehan over some tweets has put rocket boosters under that.
I’ve spent weeks trying to insert nuance into the debate over whether you really can be arrested for innocuous online posts that the British state does not like.
But the five armed cops who nabbed Linehan at Heathrow Airport have destroyed that defence.
We are used to seeing politics on the streets of America, but we are usually far more reserved in Blighty.
No longer.
And the rest of the world is on tenterhooks over how this is going to play out.
Let me paint you a picture . . .
A deeply unpopular left-of-centre leader elected on a mandate of change but quickly crashing back down to Earth and met with an angry, over-taxed and fed-up electorate.
Established parties arguing over a comb while more and more voters turn their backs on the usual political avenues and instead take matters into their own hands.
Protests, rallies and formerly fringe figures given a new prominence, with unpredictable outcomes.
It’s people before politics. Ordinary folk, fed up with being told to sit down, shut up and pay up
Once laughed-at candidates suddenly on the cusp of power, while the old order crumbles in a panic.
While this may sound like Sir Keir Starmer’s current predicament in Britain, our American friends have seen this movie already.
It started with the Tea Party response to Barack Obama’s left-leaning, big-tax, big-spend politics.
Short for Taxed Enough Already — but with a nod to the 1773 Boston Tea Party uprising that fired the starting gun on the American Revolution that overthrew the British — the Tea Party movement was a sign of things to come.
Rallies and marches sprung up all over the place, demanding the Government tread a little lighter on its people.
There were signs of disquiet with the old order, which President Trump would later ruthlessly tap into.
And what started on the streets and squares rippled through to the ballot box eventually.
ReutersThe 2010 ‘red wave’ saw the Tea Party-backed Republicans seize 63 House seats, shocking Obama’s administration[/caption]
A pro-Trump rally in 2021Getty Images – Getty
AlamyAnti-migrant protesters in Epping, Essex, this week[/caption]
The “red wave” 2010 midterm elections were a shocker for Obama — the last gasp of the old Republican order gaining 63 seats and control of the House of Representatives, with many of the winning candidates attuned to the Tea Party movement.
Local UK election results and recent polling would suggest the Labour Government, like the Tories before them, are due a thumping when the British public next get a say.
While there are marked ideological differences between the Tea Party and Trump’s MAGA movement, you can still draw a clear line between the two.
Not least, the tie of common sense: It’s people before politics.
Ordinary folk, fed up with being told to sit down, shut up and pay up.
And that certainly feels familiar in the mood of the British public right now, with those who have charted and led Trump’s rise to power also seeing the similarities.
One example is how the elites and established political parties are putting their heads in the sand over just quite how angry the public are and how far the mood has shifted.
‘Something big coming’
Steve Bannon, who masterminded Trump’s 2016 presidential election victory and served in his first turbulent year in the White House, predicts that British people taking to the streets is “a precursor to something big that’s coming”.
He reckons: “Brits have had it with the lies of the ruling class, the fecklessness of their politicians, the cowardice of the BBC.
“This shows a tectonic plate shift that won’t be assuaged by the rise of Reform.”
And he warns: “If the English elites do not respond to their countrymen, dark days are ahead.”
Former Ukip MP Douglas Carswell, who now runs the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, says he can see a “spirit of restlessness stirring” across his homeland, in a similar way to recent populist uprisings in America.
Ignore the protests and outrage from voters who feel passed over by the traditional offerings at your peril.
He warns: “All the ingredients are there for it to develop into a serious storm.”
After serving as MP for Clacton for 12 years — both for the Conservatives and Ukip — before emigrating to the US, he predicts: “The danger is the British state is too boneheaded to understand it needs to bend in the face of the storm, in which case it may break.”
So is the Government listening?
There are flickers of hope, and some are trying to kick Downing Street into gear.
Britain’s man in Washington, Lord Mandelson, will say in a speech today: “I credit President Trump’s political instincts in identifying the anxieties gripping not only millions of Americans, but also far more pervasive Western trends: Economic stagnation for many, a sense of irreversible decline, the lost promise of meaningful work . . .
“These American concerns find their mirror image in British society.”
And never a man to waste a single word, you can read this as a direct warning to Sir Keir Starmer from his US ambassador: “The President may not follow the traditional rulebook or conventional practice, but he is a risk-taker in a world where a ‘business as usual’ approach no longer works.
“Indeed, he seems to have an iron-clad stomach for political risk . . . that other presidents would have thought endlessly about before descending into an analysis paralysis and gradual incrementalism.”
An “analysis paralysis” would be the words on the Prime Minister’s tombstone were he to be forced out from office soon.
Sir Keir could do worse than listen to the Dark Lord if he does not want to see dark days ahead.
Yet when something daft happens, each judicial overstep, every overzealous chipping away of our freedoms, every fresh outrage or scandal, there comes a flurry of fury and “Something Must Be Done” energy from ministers.
Only for nothing to actually happen, no wind of change blows, their status reduced to mere by- standers or media commentators.
Both the Democrats and the establishment Republicans in Washington learnt the hard way this is a one-way street to doom.
Ignore at your peril the protests and outrage from voters who feel passed over by the traditional offerings. Ultimately, it was these voters who rammed President Trump into the White House.
And as his right-hand Cabinet man predicted, it is easy to see American politics’ complete takeover by an outsider happening in Britain, too.
News Group Newspapers ltdThe US has a morbid fascination with what’s going wrong in the UK and Graham Linehan’s arrest over tweets has only intensified the scrutiny[/caption]
AlamyFrom raising flags and spraying roundabouts with the Saint George’s Cross, to Essex mums taking to the streets over illegal immigrants, America is watching closely[/caption]
The Sun’s Editor-At-Large Harry Cole, reporting from AmericaLeigh Green Published: [#item_custom_pubDate]
