Simon Tisdall had this to say in The Observer this morning:
Measured by willingness and capacity to harm the world's poorest and most vulnerable, wreak global economic mayhem and threaten nuclear annihilation, Trump is uniquely dangerous – and ever more so by the day.
Unsurprisingly, given comments that I have made of late around the theme that he addresses in his article, which is how the tyranny of Trump might come to an end, I agree with him.
However, what worries me as I scan the news today is just how many people in the UK are likely to vote for someone who is Trump adjacent. Farage shares much in common with Trump and is supposedly the most popular political leader in the UK at present, even though almost every policy he promotes would deliver considerable harm to those who seem to support him, just as is the case with Trump.
Is it entirely selfish to hope that Trump crashes so soon that the rest of us might be saved from having to suffer a similar fate?
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I hope this does not sound like a broken record – just finshed Catherine Nixey’s “Heretic” charts what happened wrt Christianity and the emergence of the Catholic church (0Ad to circa 400AD). The parallels with Mango/Farage and simple messages offering hope and believed by many people are startling. The pixie dust the early Christians had was that they offered help to the poor coupled to a simple message/simple story. Most people cannot handle complexity. The educated middle classes (150AD) laughed at the Christians – who they regarded as imbeciles (in fairness – they were). The game changer was Constantine (320AD) it was not that he became Christian but that he was emperor for (relatively speaking) a long time by Roman emperor standards (20 years). Thus by 400AD there was full scale book burning (anything not Christian was burnt) and the situation was very much Orwells 1984 (= thought crime).
Bright people on this blog. I like them. They can deal with complexity.
Do any of us go out into the country and speak to ordinary joes?
Ever?
It took the best of 1400 years for western humanity to extract itself from the imbecility called Christianity. The rise of Mango and others with simple/stupid messages will deliver humanity into the hands another bunch of lunatics that have only their interests at heart (which is power and its use). We have reached this point due to various factors which revolve around: who gets what in a fair fashion.
& yes, I’m very worried – actually – frightened.
I spend a lot of time talking to ‘ordinary’ people, wherever and whenever I can.
I certainly ‘go out into the country and talk to ordinary Joes’ – the vast majority of those living where I live are ‘ordinary Joes’ and we all exchange greetings and even have conversations, but I do live in north Derbyshire (war paint and woad). In these greetings and conversations (other than warnings of ‘lam o’nt rode’) I have found, so far, no one who would support Farage and very few who would re-elect our present right wing Labour MP (a London lawyer/employment law which around here is translated as ‘his clients were employers’ and he is both disliked and mistrusted – he follows the party line without any care or concern for his constituents. We have County Council elections on Thursday (6 candidates), and it will be interesting to find out the results. Very many people, including me, are extremely frightened for the future.
Thanks
A vote for me by me too. I speak to ordinary people all of the time. And listen to them on public transport.
With regard to Trump, he is onto something because Larry Elliott has pointed this out, that people think there is something wrong with globalisation – Glasman (eugh!) can’t wait for its end – but look at how it is being done by Trump – as if China stole that manufacturing capacity of the states when we know that it was the rich U.S. owners who sold those jobs abroad in search of higher profit margins at home. Globalisation was always an arbitraging of wages but was sold as ‘lifting people out of poverty’ whilst actually helping many Westerners into it.
Done like Trump is doing it is simply wrong but also very deceitful and will not solve the problem. The rich will get off lightly, like they always do. That is what sticks in my craw. My worry is that Trump has fallen in with those who want war with China which is one of the oldest international grudge matches in history. If manufacturing is coming home to the U.S. it can only be with even more environmental degradation and more debt to own what is produced unless the U.S. declares a new new deal. But international trade neds to change, it needs to become more co-operative in nature.
As for listening to people, I knew that there was something wrong with Labour when my final salary pension was scrapped in the public sector as Blair kept to BSBR rules set by the Tories for no good reason. Labour is now persona non grata to many people who feel that they have turned their back on them increasingly over the years. In North West Derbyshire where I live, the Tories who ruled for some time were at least old fashioned patrician types who looked after their lower class oiks. Labour however, have no clue because all they did was gravitate to looking after the interests of the nouveau riche that Thatcher created and whom could not care less about anyone but themselves as John Gray points out in ‘The New Leviathans’ (2023, pp.131-132). This is why people will gravitate to Reform and folk like Trump. Reform have not won anything. Labour will just lose, just like the Tories lost to Labour because they were shit and got rumbled (Labour did not ‘win’ they were just the NBT – Next Best Thing to vote for). And Trump won because the Democrats lost to the NBT phenomenon.
Now Starmer is going to get rumbled as he reneged on his promises and Reform is the ‘new’ NBT. That’s how people in search of something behave when they vote out of a sense of duty or even ignorance. They look for the Next Best Thing (NBT) to what they want. It is only possible because our political system and democracy has totally broken down and ceased to function because of the misapplication of liberalism. It should be terminated with extreme prejudice.
As Lou Reed said on his New York album, ‘Stick a fork in its ass – it’s done’. And the ghost of Carl Schmitt sits there chuckling at us and shaking his head. Shush now – listen………..can you hear him?
🙂
All the time. The response has overwelmingly been ‘that’s interesting, I never thought about it like that before’…. so not all grim news there? My advice: evolve engaging or amusing metaphors; the audience then puzzles about how to fit their view into your thinking, or about adapting the metaphor. Throwing facts around simply provokes disbelief or contestation, rarely works
I too worry about the rising tide of fascism. Living in Barnard Castle there is opportunity a plenty to talk to ordinary people. Having almost finished renovating a house here I have come into contact with many a tradesman of late. A worrying number, let’s be clear, all of them, will vote reform. And why is this? No vision from Starmer. No exciting policies from Labour. A perceived lack of control on immigration, an unfair tax burden on the poorest. I could add a perception that the Government don’t care about agriculture.
I have debated over lunches with them. They won’t be swayed. Farage will distance himself from Trump. He will need to. Trump is starting to cost votes.
I don’t want Farage or Boris (yes he will be back). But to be honest I don’t want Labour either. I am almost despairing. A vision and policies to the left of the Liberals would see an even bigger landslide for Labour at the next general election. But a huge opportunity will be missed. In Tony Benn’s language, Starmer is a weather vane, when we need a signpost.
In resonse to Mr Newby…….one way (ref the tradesmen) is to talk to their pockets. If LINO pulled its head out of its arse then large-scale thermal rennovation of housing – driven/controlled by local gov using local work force would put money straight in their pockets. The organisation of this is trivial in the extreme – but LINO is functionally incapable of working this out – the are mostly focused on inside-the-M25/inside Wezzie events/developments and regard local gov as… trash.
Talk to ordinary Joes?
Yes, every part of every day, they are my neighbours and part of my local faith community. Today my ward was named as the 5th most violent in Bristol, and its competitors are next door.
I admire my neighbours, seriously, for their warmth, their humanity, their intelligence and their honesty. At a time of personal tragedy, its wonderful to live amongst real warm caring human beings.
But Fa***e goes down well here. His one big advantage is that he hasn’t failed at running anything yet (and both the Tories and Starmer have failed big time, so why not give that Fa***e a go?) and he does populism very effectively, not being constrained by ethics or integrity, and being utterly unaccountable with unlimited cash flowing into his coffers from who knows where.
So its quite important that Reform win some power on Thursday, so they can fail and be seen to fail. (But not in my back yard please!!!!)
The only thing Fa***e has had control of so far is that private company of his, that he calls a party and that hasn’t gone too well. He can’t even run his little Reform parliamentary group without a split (with Lowe).
It’s a drastic solution, but it will be power that undoes him. Give him some rope and see what he does with Lincolnshire County Council. (Sorry, to any Lincolnsire readers)
If he gets the votes, then the people of Lincolnshire will have the chance to learn the hard way. If they are lucky maybe the Reform councillors will fall foul of the local gov’t rules on corruption or conflicts of interest within a few months, then get disqualified and they can try again at a by-election.
That’s what is scuppering Trump – failure in office.
If Fa***e’s cronies are suppressed by the status quo STP, without being exposed for the incompetent fascist frauds that I believe Reform to be, then he will simply come back again with even more support.
Ideally, I’d like Fa***e to have a Damascus Road conversion. Failing that, exposure as a massive hypocritical fraud. But I don’t think either is likely. So it may have to be a little bit of power followed by ignominious public failure. As soon as possible.
If Starmer’s party had not backtracked on the policies that they originally claimed to stand for, Reform would be a noisy minority.
The Labour party, as we have observed before, seem to be determined to repeat the mistakes of 1931 i.e. promoting the ideology of the bankers over the needs of the country.
Agreed
There’s a sobering article in the Guardian by Professor Stacy Torres describing her fathers paranoia and flight from Chile, to America, after Pinochet. Well with reading.
Sorry I don’t know how to place a link.
The article by Prof Torres
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/apr/27/chile-trump-pinochet-authoritarianism?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
Thanks
We have a Scottish Parliament by-election in our constituency next month, due to the death of our long-time sitting MSP (Christina McKelvie, SNP.) Despite us having SNP stickers plastered on our front door, we got a Reform Leaflet put through it. I wish I had seen who put it there …I’d have gone out and confronted them.
This is scary. The idea that people whom I might even know would deliberately vote for somebody who will do them harm because other parties ‘aren’t good enough,’ is something I just can’t comprehend. Is chaos the answer these voters truly crave? Is political vandalism the order of the day? Seems it’s trending that way.
I know a lot of people who say they plan to vote reform. Ask them details about policies they favour and their replies are nothing like anything reform would likely give them. So why will they vote for them? Usually they’ve heard Farage listing things that are wrong with the Country about which “something should be done” They find they agree with him all these thing are wrong (who wouldn’t?), they know everything got worse under the Tories and nothing is getting better under Labour so where else do they look? Like Trump, Farage is very good at implying a vote for him would fix everything and the only other alternatives, the Lib Dems or the Greens are not. We need better education on rational thinking in schools and less mainstream media bias towards the wants of their wealthy owners.
“I know a lot of people who say they plan to vote reform. Ask them details about policies they favour and their replies are nothing like anything reform would likely give them. So why will they vote for them?”
They will vote for “them” because they want “Direct Tangible Financial Benefit” to their household.
They believe “them” will give it to them because all other parties have failed to deliver what they thought they were voting for.
This is reason Trump received so many “swing” votes. Sane people thought that Biden did a better than average job with directly helping the “country” through COVID and other crises but they themselves (their household) did not directly benefit (“Direct Tangible Financial Benefit”) from Biden’s policies.
Remember Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, onetime purveyor of expensive wallpaper, unlawful publicly funded parties and suspicious looking peerages?
“Get Brexit Done” got him into Downing Street with a majority in 2019.
Reform have taken a page from his playbook.
“**** (insert name of anything here – eg your county name) is broken.
Reform will fix it”
It works.
It’s 50% true.
Fa***e is the Jimmy Savile of modern politics.
Trump also used the slogan.
https://www.nysun.com/article/harris-broke-it-and-trump-will-fix-it-the-message-behind-his-electric-madison-square-garden-rally
(It also helps to have lots of dodgy foreign funding, corruptly sycophantic media coverage, a permanent campbed and seat with your name on it down at the BBC QT Studio, and a willingness to promise anything to anyone.)
A random example, Reform have targeted granular equivalents for all this years county election targets.
https://www.bucksfreepress.co.uk/news/yoursay/opinion/bfpcomment/25083570.bucks-broken-reform-will-fix-writes-nigel-farage/
(do not publish if the link does not work..)
This is an interesting “talk to real people” in the Sunday Times.
Matt Rudd went to Lincolnshire to talk about the Mayoral election.
Candidates with a chance are the charming ex-Tory minister Andrea Jenkyns and Labour’s Jason Stockwood who used to run Grimsby FC.
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/my-reform-road-trip-is-there-anyone-not-voting-for-farage-9s5k6cfmr
Matt”s conclusion:
On the way back to the car, I ask a young man in a “f*** off” bucket hat who he’s voting for. He looks at me as if I’ve asked what E equals and I call it a day. Extrapolating, it will be a Reform landslide in Lincolnshire on a record low turnout, or I’ll eat that bucket hat.
Sadly, I agree with Robert J that ‘ its quite important that Reform win some power on Thursday, so they can fail and be seen to fail.’ After all, that was largely what happened with UKIP in this area.
I also talk to a lot of people and frequently hear the ‘We might as well give Reform a go .. they can’t be worse than what we’ve got.’ It’s that or not going to bother to vote.
Interestingly, I also heard some Tory small businessmen talking who simply rejected Reform out of hand as not being feasible. They were sad at what has happened to the Conservatives.
I am somewhat sceptic of the “fail and be seen to fail.’ notion.
Trump is widely being seen to fail because some of the distraction spectacles that he was chosen and propelled to power to provide appear, from a certain viewpoint, to be failing. Taking the most obvious of those – tariffs – they only appear to failing if you assume that their intent was to improve the US economy. But that has not been their intent – the intent has been to create a massive media- and mind-consuming distraction, to upend the current US fiscal management regime and to make a great deal of money for a very few select people who have enough personal wealth, or access to sources of loanable wealth, to greatly increase their wealth by placing timely bets in the financial market Ponzi scheme, based on having inside information on events just before they occur and become publicly known. In that sense, the tariff distraction has been immensely successful, as it also has, along with the antics of the useful billionaire idiot Musk, in creating a massive distraction from the detail of the activity actually being undertaken by Russell Vought and others in implementing the Playbook for the 2025 variant of Mandate for Leadership (aka Project 2025), whilst advancing many of the basic requirements of that implementation plan.
A good time for assessing the success of those who propelled Trump to a second term, (and I don’t mean the MAGA/GoP voters, but those who engineered his selection and ensured the funding, media coverage and backroom activity needed to secure his second presidential term), will be in about 80 days time, when we can take stock of how far Project 2025 has progressed along the crucial 180-day timeline; I suspect that we will find it to have been massively successful – everything seems to me to point in that direction.
From the point of view of Reform/Farage, it might be well to consider the aims of Larry Fink of BlackRock, Peter Thiel of Palantir, Google, Amazon, IHPN and others who stands to gain from the corporatisation of the UK state and government; whilst Farage would no doubt be a disaster for the UK public and for those who hold a roughly left-of-centre view of what a good UK government and economy might look like, I can’t see that his views would be one for those from whom Starmer is taking advice and policy directives.
In fact, I suspect it might be every bit as extreme and apparently disastrous as the activities of the Trump chaos brigade and fo much the same reasons, but I also suspect it would greatly advance the cause of those who wish to see our democracy replaced by an oligarchic technocracy where law, economy and social behaviour are dictated by a group of CEO’s operating various domains of economic dominance in an affiliation of something akin to ancient pre-Solonian Greek city states, unconstrained by any notion of democratic, legal or constitutional oversight. We live in a thinly-veiled feudal oligarchy and the transition from that to the envisaged corporate technocracy will be, in many ways, much easier to effect than in the USA. We are, by tradition and history, more malleable than the American public and we do not, thank the stars, have the right to bear arms. We are tomorrow’s hektemoroi/sharecroppers in that “technoligarchic” world.
Whilst we might view the implementation of such an arrangement, achieved whilst Farage conducts circuses and selectively distributes bread, as a social, political and economic disaster, that affiliation of CEO-administered states, or at least their dictators, would not.
I’m not sure that, in the end, it will matter whether Starmer or Farage is the political figurehead of our progression to techno-corporatisation; either would adequately suit the purpose and we will see either of them as having failed whilst the technocratic affiliation celebrates success beyond its expectations.
I think it is naive to imagine that Project 2025 will fail, because there is, as yet, no empirical evidence of it failing in its own terms and, by the same token, I have difficulty in imagining that its offshoot in the UK will fail either.
All the evidence is that we are still stuck in and captive to the public nonsense and media distractions of our system of interchangeable establishment political parties, whilst beneath that charade, our democracy and our freedom and our rights to dictate our future are being quietly but irreversibly removed and derogated, to make way for the incoming technocratic plutocracy.
How are you defining success and failure? And is 180 days enough?
Do you think public backlash will have no impact, because it is growing fast in the USA?
The problem with plans is they never survive contact with the enemy. Project 2025 is no different. A plan drawn up by a bunch of ideologically aligned people surrounded by enablers and drunk on their own self belief will not take into account the adaptability of their opposition. They will push the overton window, sure, but most states eventually fall back into their original form of government. Russia always falls back into oligarchy, America will fall back into democracy, of sorts, when the dust settles.
I would define success in the US as establishing a critical mass of the elements of political, judicial and administrative control set out in the 2025 Mandate for Leadership to ensure that the rest of the program can be carried out successfully and produce the desired governmental regime and the associated control of the operation of the US economy and society. The authors of the Mandate evidently believe that 180 days is an adequate target for that. I think their belief is that once the necessary governance framework and principles have been established and are stably managed, it will then be feasible to repair any economic or structural damage done during creating of that stability.
I think that the flaw in the approach is a supposition that the dollar hegemony and the dominant position of the US can be maintained during the Project 2025 coup and that it will persist after it – I don’t think either of those things is true – I think that Trump has been allowed to do so much damage that the dollar is now in irreversible decline and I think that the increasing economic and political strength of China, India, Indonesia, Brazil and others will ensure that the US will not be able to retain dominance, particularly given that most of its dominance depends on abuse of the dollar to achieve its geopolitical aims.
The US may, particularly given the ascendency of noisy hawks under Trump, embark on a military offensive using Taiwan as a proxy in an attempt to retain dominance – that would be a disaster, definitely for the US and probably for the world. I think that will probably get less likely as Trump continues his accelerating mental decline and moves are made to install an alternative figurehead – constitutionally Vance, but I am not sure that would be a given once Project 2025 remakes of the constitution are effected. I think a disciplined, intelligent and consistent figurehead would be required to transition to a post-Project 2025 steady state and I am sure the authors/proponents are aware of that. Russell Vought?
As regards popular opposition in the US – I don’t think that actually constitutes a particularly powerful constraint – there is no really concerted opposition to the current regime and, if there were, then the Insurrection Act would be invoked and used to suppress it. Again, I have no doubt that the authors of the Mandate have fully considered the implications of popular resistance and are prepared for it and are prepared to do whatever it might take to ensure that they are not impeded from achieving their goals. Whilst there is some resistance emerging from academic and legal institutions, I think it is probably too little, too late and I think there is sufficient division in US society and establishment to be leveraged and exploited to ensure that any popular opposition does not become overwhelming. Cory Booker sitting on the steps and AOC and Sanders tour make good spectacles, but they are not operating inside the corridors of power. I listened to some of Booker’s speech from the steps today and it struck me as the sort of rhetoric used to initiate the formation of a popular resistance movement, when what is needed to stop the progress towards achievement of the Project 2025 aims now is a fully-fledged resistance movement. Schumer’s 8 strongly worded questions are not one either.
On the UK side, I imagine that success could be measured as a point at which sufficient progress is made to ensure that political and economic control of the UK would in due course be formally, (legislatively and constitutionally), vested in the affiliation of CEO-administered states that I referred to in my earlier reply. I think that we are perhaps a further way towards that than might be realised. It appears that little has been done to constrain the use of delegated powers by the new (so-called Labour) government and that it has persisted their use quite widely. (e.g. https://binghamcentre.biicl.org/documents/2205_data_use_and_access_bill.pdf). The use of delegated powers provides a very easy route to achieving transition to corporate hegemony in the UK without parliamentary “interference”.
As for popular opposition in the UK, Firstly, I think there is a degree of public complacency/indifference/ignorance that means that the great bulk of the populace and the electorate have no comprehension or awareness of the dangers of the current situation or of the slide towards autocracy here. We are accustomed, and have been since Magna Carta, to living in a formally established feudal oligarchy masquerading as democracy. And then, unlike the US where there are strong established opposition media, we have a completely submissive mainstream media dominated by oligarchs and subject to mechanisms that allow the state to control their output if it so desires. (And that includes left-wing mainstream, which isn’t an opposition media, but a compliant one written so as to make those on the left feel as though they are reading anti-establishment copy – they aren’t). In theory, of course, compliance with the mechanisms for editorial constraint is voluntary – in practice, compliance is a Whatsapp message to a media oligarch away.
So I don’t think that a popular backlash is an actual impediment, either in the US or here and particularly not here. There has been a degree of popular backlash against NHS privatisation here for time out of mind and media awareness of it, (although not, of course, anything amounting to actual obstructive opposition). I haven’t observed that that backlash has in any way constrained the steady state-conducted decimation of our national health system. Legislative and police powers, (and, of course surveillance and stealth policing) have meanwhile been increased to a level at which I cannot really conceive of anything akin to the poll tax riots of the Thatcher era being successful today. To my mind, if you were able implement Brexit by flagrantly abusing a non-binding advisory process, you could do pretty much anything you want if you are in power in the UK establishment. We don’t have safeguards – we have charades.
There is a video on the dollar in the morning.
Are there enough current MPs from the Labour Party who would be willing to break off and start a new party, based on the values Labour should be promoting? England really does need a new party …one that would attract voters the way Reform attracted voters (initially away from the Conservatives.)
If a fascist right-wing party can gain such ground so fast, why can’t a party with the opposite view gain that same kind of ground? Waiting for Labour to change itself isn’t working.
‘Good’ Labour people have nothing to lose by staging a breakaway at this point.
I tend to agree
But those on the greasy pole of politics, rather than those driven by conviction, see things very differently.
Today’s metaphor: AI and social media algorithms are ultra-processed thought.
I echo Pilgrim Slight Return’s sentiment: Reform is just the next big thing. When both main political parties have completely failed us, people will just turn to the next most prominent option. Reform is everywhere, and that is more important than what they actually stand for. No one is paying attention beyond the sound bites. My mother was talking to my brother’s carers, all nice people. They are all going to vote for Reform, despite my mother pointing out that it could cost them their jobs and worsen the position of the people under their care. It didn’t matter. Farage will save them apparently. Voting isn’t done through hard analysis, it’s done with emotions first. If you wonder how a person can be convinced to vote for Reform, then ask yourself, could you be convinced to vote for them? The answer is likely no. They have already decided and won’t be convinced otherwise. Farage will need to be in power and fail miserably before people will see him for what he is.
Yesterrday Our parish Church Churchwardens announced that the Charhyard and church will be closed for access for 30 days from1 May 2025 as a result oif disrespectful violent and anti- social behaviour which has been growing over the past 10 years. Everyone is aying its a giood decision, I can understand the reasoning but it makes one wonder where or what next?
We used to have a police force but the locals do not believe in them nor have they been effective.Gossip and rumour is prevalent. How long before we have riots?
I live in a small country town which thinks its a tourist attracting place- for how long? Have all hope been lost?
All hope is never lost. But things can be bleak.
https://youtube.com/shorts/ozf57ZLT_GQ?si=RMTsgpZhmiTnLvnC
An interesting video by the Green Party about how Reform voters don’t know what Reforms policies are and that surveys show that the average Reform voters is actually favourable of Green policies. But, Greens don’t have millions thrown at them, or have a simple message of hate to rally behind. They are just liberals pushing identity politics as far as many are concerned.
The ‘Working Class’ masquerader Farage is the most popular political leader at the moment? Heaven help us!