Trumpism comes to Britain

Trumpism has arrived with a bang in the United Kingdom . Britain’s Trump — he won’t be in the least offended by the comparison, being a big cheerleader for the former president — is Nigel Farage , who led the anti-EU U.K. Independence Party and has now transformed it into a broader insurgent movement, the Reform Party.

The Reform Party is polling just a couple of points behind the governing Conservatives . Britain has finally followed Europe in acquiring a party on the populist Right. The difference is that the U.K.’s electoral system brutally punishes splits on either side of the spectrum, meaning that the Left-wing Labour Party is set to win a record number of MPs despite getting fewer votes than the Tories got last time.

What do I mean by populist? There are various giveaways. The constant positioning of politics as “real people” versus “elites.” They claim that easy solutions exist,but that “they” won’t try them. A sense of victimhood. A hankering after protectionism. A readiness to descry secret agendas, hidden hands.

Thus, vaccines are a racket by Big Pharma ; politicians are being manipulated by the WEF; state-run digital currencies are a plot; mass immigration is a function, not of global population movements, but of a deliberate program of ethnic replacement.

Farage himself has little time for conspiracy theories . We worked alongside each other for 21 years as Members of the European Parliament , and I found him intelligent, straightforward, and easy to deal with.

To his credit, he kept his party away from the combination of Left-wing economics and Right-wing culture wars that define so many European insurgent parties — Marine Le Pen ’s National Rally in France , for example.

Reform’s program is, in fact, pretty much the same as the Conservative Party’s: tax cuts, free enterprise, secure borders, no more wokery. The difference between the two parties rests partly on tone, and partly with the fact that, being out of office, Reform can criticize the Tories’ failure to deliver.

Farage had been doing a good job of keeping his party mainstream. Then, last week, he lined up with the Continental far-right and with Trump by arguing that “the West provoked Putin stupidly”.

Now it is important to be clear about what he did and didn’t say. Farage does not support Vladimir Putin ’s invasion. Unlike Trump, he has never praised Putin other than as a tactician. Even so, the Russian dictator was overjoyed to hear the argument that the democracies were unwise to “poke the Russian bear with a stick,” this being precisely his justification for the war.

In fact, Russia broke a treaty to invade a neighboring country which offered it no threat. When you see a bear rampaging toward you, clawing at anything in its path, poking it with a stick might be rational.

In any case, Farage’s nuance is lost on many of his followers. Reform candidates have argued that “Putin wants peace — it’s the West that don’t”; that Boris Johnson is “acting like Zelensky’s rent boy, touting for war”; that the Ukraine war is about “the US defense budget.”

Unlike in the United States, these are fringe views in Britain. Polls show that 83% of voters support NATO , and 80% want it to admit Ukraine .

But for how much longer? The creepiest aspect of Trumpism is the way followers constantly rearrange their view of the world around their leader’s personal convenience. Trump did not tap into an unexploited seam of Russophilia; rather, the MAGA crowd resent Ukraine for its cameo role in the impeachment.

My guess is that Faragistes will adjust their opinions about the Ukraine war to stay in line with their leader. For another symptom of Right-wing populism is Führerprinzip, a readiness to subordinate your views to your leader’s, to elevate the strongman over the party.

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This hero worship leads to the giving-it-out-and-taking-it problem that both Trumpsters and Faragistes have. When talking about their opponents, no epithet is too strong. They are liars, crooks, and traitors who should be locked up. But the slightest criticism of their guy, even when it takes the form of quoting his own words on an issue where he later changed his mind, provokes squeals of outrage.

It was only a matter of time before Britain followed other Western countries. In the U.S., primaries allowed Trumpism to colonize one of the main parties. In Europe, proportional voting means that the traditional and insurgent parties can exist side by side and form coalitions. But in Britain, the impact is to give the Left an unchallenged grip on power. Funny how things work out.