For Britain, it has to be Trump

A US election special

The British public do not like Donald Trump. Donald Trump, on the other hand, genuinely likes Britain (this is almost indisputable), but this love is sadly not reciprocated. Polling by YouGov says that 64% of British adults want Kamala Harris to win; just 18% want Donald Trump to win. Of the major political parties, only the supporters of Reform UK favour Trump over Harris.

Given the staggering amount of herding in the polling, we will not even bother to try to make a prediction as to who will win tonight. Instead, tonight, we will try to make the case that, contrary to the opinion of most Britons, Donald Trump is preferable not only for America, but for Britain as well. Since I am sure that readers have already read plenty in favour of Trump from the American perspective, today we will focus on the British perspective.

If there were a different man in Number 10, the most immediate benefit from the perspective of Britain would be that Donald Trump — a man who is clearly an Anglophile — would be more likely to sign a trade deal with Brexit Britain, something that we desperately need. Joe Biden, a man who seems to be inexplicably wedded to his increasingly distant Irish ancestry, had no sympathy with Britain; indeed, he seemed to go out of his way to humiliate this country whenever possible. The other thing that Trump is known for — pressuring NATO members who underspend on defence — is simply irrelevant to Britain, which already meets its commitments.

Yet the problem with Britain and the Democratic Party is not limited to the problem of Biden and the Republic of Ireland: there is little sign that Kamala Harris would be much warmer to Britain. The more fundamental problem is that the Democratic Party, having desecrated much of what remains of ‘WASP’ America, are now turning to attacking Britain itself. Many politically moderate Britons, whether on the centre-left or the centre-right, were taken aback by the apparent hostility of the New York Times to the monarchy — and Britain more generally — after the death of Elizabeth II. They should get used to it, because there is no doubt that, for the Democratic Party, Britain is a symbol of the old, racist, imperialist America, without rather than within. I’m sure you’ve seen the anti-Britain (and often also anti-France) memes on X. These don’t come from nowhere: they are, by now, symbols of something that Britain will not be able to escape in its relations with any Democratic administration. Actual national self-interest on the part of the Americans will increasingly be ignored, as Britain has become part of the broader American culture war. For this reason alone, no intelligent Briton should ever support the Democrats, no matter how boorish they think Donald Trump is.

While people point to Donald Trump’s protectionist tendencies, most notably his claim that he will abolish federal income tax by implementing a flat global tariff of 10% — combined with Britain’s continued trade surplus with the United States, which (some say) Trump would want to target — the risk of Trump following through on this threat is overstated. As many have pointed out, there is no chance that this could actually fund the abolition of federal income tax. Many well-informed people say that this is just a negotiation tactic: a threat to use against those who try to resist reduction in federal government spending. But even beyond this, Trump’s main obsessions are firstly with China, and second with NATO freeloaders. Hiking tariffs is the fastest way to alienate those who would otherwise be sympathetic to his agenda. Our view is that this was something that Trump said without much thought, and that his advisors will ensure that he will back away — instead supporting more targeted tariffs, such as to support infant industries, or more specifically against China — from this soon enough if he wins.

Of course, under Keir Starmer — thanks to his ineptitude — the path to a trade deal is much narrower. Yet even this presents benefits for Britain, at least from the narrower perspective of the Right. Although Starmer has began an attempt to counter this narrative, informing the media that Lammy got on well with Trump, and (rather ominously) that Sofia Patel — responsible for the infamous Linkedin post — had been ‘dealt with’, it is clear that there is the potential for an explosive undermining of Starmer’s attempt at a rapprochement with the American Right. It is unlikely that Elon Musk can even be in the same room as the man. Trump and his allies are still angry at Labour. The idea of Starmer being publicly humiliated if he ever visited the most powerful country in the world is positively titillating. Even beyond this, if it becomes clear that appeasing the Global South is worth nothing, and if the new American administration is openly contemptuous of not only much of ‘international law’ generally, but of the Starmer government more specifically, then this is fantastic for Britain.

In the global context of a second Trump administration, and with Europe increasingly dominated by the nationalist Right, it is difficult to see a future for Starmerism, let alone the continued retrenchment of the social democratic consensus of the 2000-16 period in Britain. All the extant social democratic regimes in the West are already embattled. Starmer will become globally isolated. How Starmer and/or his successors manage their relationship with the rest of the First World will partially determine the longevity of the Starmer project. The Chagos Islands incident has been revealing enough: Starmer and his goons are happy to surrender British territory just to enforce the increasingly dated logic that can be found within ‘international law’.

As the tangible benefits of a programme of the repatriation of illegal immigrants and the ‘Andreesen Consensus’ become apparent to an electorate frozen in the early ’00s, the obvious question of ‘why here?’ will become frighteningly clear to Keir Starmer. But it is overwhelmingly unlikely that the present Labour Party are capable of carrying out a Danish-style suspension of mass migration (indeed, it is perhaps even too late for this achieve a genuinely lasting settlement). Instead, Britain will likely be left ideologically — and perhaps also diplomatically, even in Europe — isolated; a reactionary holdout of the world before Trump; increasingly a sponge for the surplus population of the Third World, with visibly deteriorating living standards and a reduced international standing.

In selecting ‘Kemi’, the Conservatives have equally proven themselves — for now — to be incapable of recapturing the global zeitgeist. We have eschewed the route to comfortable and peaceful reform, and are instead more on a revolutionary timeline in which political instability and discomfort are guaranteed. If the parliamentary Left and Right are unable to respond to the very real material needs of the British public, we are left on a far more dangerous course. Following Trump’s example, by contrast, is the choice for peace, stability, and continuity.