{"id":86995,"date":"2025-10-25T08:14:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-25T07:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=86995"},"modified":"2025-10-25T08:14:00","modified_gmt":"2025-10-25T07:14:00","slug":"we-are-in-a-fight-for-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2025\/10\/25\/we-are-in-a-fight-for-democracy\/","title":{"rendered":"We are in a fight for democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Democracy really is under threat in the USA. Almost unmentioned by the media in the UK, it is grinding to a halt.<\/p>\n

This comes from the ever-useful<\/a> Letters from an American newsletter by Heather Cox Richardson:<\/p>\n

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has canceled House business again next week, meaning that over the last 17 weeks, the House of Representatives will have worked on Capitol Hill for just 20 days.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As\u00a0she then explains:<\/p>\n

Trump is trying to make the impasse between the parties about the shutdown [about the Federal budget], but that obscures the actual fight at hand.<\/p>\n

What is at stake is the theory behind the Republicans\u2019 One Big Beautiful Bill Act [and] the destruction of the modern American government that was put in place in the 1930s by Democrats under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and expanded from then until 1981 under both Democratic and Republican presidents.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s fight is about the cuts made by billionaire Elon Musk as head of the \u201cDepartment of Government Efficiency,\u201d and cuts made after Musk left the administration by Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought.<\/p>\n

Republicans have embraced the destruction of the modern government, slashing SNAP [food stamp] benefits, Medicaid, cancer research, the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), and so on. The Democrats are defending the government that has been in place since the 1930s, focused on leveling the playing field between the very wealthy and ordinary Americans.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Note that last line, because in half a sentence, Heather Cox Richardson summarises what the fight is all about in the USA. It is:<\/p>\n

[F]ocused on leveling the playing field between the very wealthy and ordinary Americans.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And that summarises the whole of modern politics. The far-right parties are only interested in promoting the cause of the wealthy. At the end of the day, that is all their agenda about. Everything else - from furore about migration onwards - is about deflecting attention from this fact. And it is working. It seems that almost a third of voters in England - the vast majority of them not well off - are being persuaded to destroy the very system of government that was created to protect their interests, and they are falling for it.<\/p>\n

In the States, it is still around 30 per cent who support Trump.<\/p>\n

The questions are threefold. First, will voters change their minds in the US when it becomes apparent just how destructive Trump is, whether it be for the future of Mid-West farming, which now has no Chinese market for its soya beans, or for household budgets, where medical premiums are set to soar in price if the full impact of his cuts comes into effect in November?<\/p>\n

Second, will the disenchantment that I expect in the US spread to the UK?<\/p>\n

Third, can parties like the Greens, Plaid Cymru, the SNP and maybe Your Party, inject sufficient life into politics in the UK to suggest that Reform is not the place to go to fund an alternative to the failed politics of both Labour and the Tories?<\/p>\n

Time will tell, but what is certain is that we are in a fight for democracy itself, as is being seen in the US right now.<\/p>\n

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Poll<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Is the really big political issue now the fight to save democracy?<\/strong><\/p>