Around a year ago, I had recently moved home to the UK from the United States and was basking in the almost universal admiration of American friends. While they were staring into the muzzle of a another Trump term with its guarantee of chaos and division, we had elected Keir Starmer by a decisive win and were feeling pretty satisfied with ourselves. I recall people complimenting me on the wisdom of my move, which I absolutely embraced even though political considerations hadn’t been part of my decision.
The Rise of Farage’s Party
I guess the answer to that is Nigel Farage and his movement, which has in some way managed to harness the frustration, disappointment and regret felt by a significant portion of people who supported and were then disappointed by Brexit, and are now in pursuit of another movement to light. To this extent, the foundations of the conservative protest last weekend and the ascent of Reform generally feel broadly of a piece with their US antecedents.
This represents a scenario, at least in part, of people clutching at whatever that pledges to rip up a system that has serially failed to benefit them.
What has felt shocking to many of us this year, though, is how rapidly the environment seems to have shifted in this nation, and how a figurehead as superficial as Farage could persuade anyone to back him at all, let alone in the path of No 10.
Frivolous Leadership and Public Ridicule
And by unserious, I don’t mean in the Trump/Boris Johnson style. You can dislike those men while acknowledging their talent as public speakers. Farage, by contrast, is a fool, a grinning clown openly ridiculed to his face by opposition members in Congress earlier this month when he showed up, at the request of Republicans, to give testimony before a House judiciary committee on freedom of expression.
Farage didn’t organise the ‘unite the kingdom’ rally on Saturday, of course; that was Tommy Robinson, the former BNP member with criminal records for assault, drug possession and deception – facts that, British media outlets were at pains to point out on Monday morning, shouldn’t tar all those who attended at his march with the same brush.
Similarities and Divergences with the American Political Scene
US observers will identify this as a critical moment: a parallel moment to that period of Trump’s rise in popularity during which his backers were given endless favorable portrayals in the US national press, and encouraged to explain why following a man who said monstrous things did not make them in the slightest bit corrupt or monstrous.
At the same time, the whiplash speed of Reform and Robinson’s rise means that the country Trump is visiting this week is seemingly very different to the one he engaged with in January. There may be a point when the US president pauses to admire his own work, and he will certainly be satisfied to see British white nationalists making progress.
But he is also a man who abhors and is eager to distance himself from “losers” – a group into which, arguably, his pal the prime minister currently falls, and who we can assume he will discard as quickly as he championed him.
Future Outlook: Traction and Societal Divergences
For the rest of us, it is a matter of waiting to see how much traction our own incarnation of the Maga movement will have. There are key differences between the two nations that leave certain large constituencies who came out in the US for Trump without direct British equivalents.
- British white nationalism references to the religious institutions as an factor, but conservative religious movements has no traction in a country where, historically, rural issues is a bigger wedge issue than reproductive rights.
- I cannot see JD Vance’s pro-birth views, rooted in his fervent Catholicism, being much of a goer here, either.
In fact – and this may be pure national bias on my part – Vance seems like the type of American who even Britons on the far right might regard intuitively as a unsettling little individual. On the other hand, if enough people are willing to swear loyalty to a agitator or an ambitious pub bore, these are differences that may hardly matter.
