Asking Liz Truss for advice on how to make conservatism popular seems as wise as consulting Paula Vennells on how best to treat your employees. That hasn’t stopped the ex-PM from giving her blessing to the new Popular Conservatism group. But at least one of her fellow PopCons might suggest it isn’t their former leader that the Tories should look to for salvation, but across the Atlantic.
Recently selected for the seat of Epsom and Ewell, Mhairi Fraser is a City lawyer who has dabbled in Donald Trump fangirling. She travelled to America to see the ex-president win in 2016 because she had ‘never been as excited’ about a politician. Fraser claimed she found Trump’s style ‘incredibly refreshing’, didn’t see him as sexist or racist, and agreed Russia wasn’t the West’s ‘natural enemy’.
There is clearly a chunk of the Tory right that is sweet on the ex-president
Blessed with the hindsight of four years of the Trump White House, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the need to win Surrey’s mild-mannered voters, Fraser has rowed back on her earlier enthusiasm for all things the Donald. A friend of hers told The Times that: ‘These views were expressed eight years ago. A lot has changed since then and so, naturally, have her views.’ Joe Biden must be chuffed.
But in turning tail on the 45th (and potentially 47th) president, Fraser is out of step with many of her fellow Conservatives. A new poll has found that 31 per cent of Conservatives would prefer a Trump victory to a Biden one in November, compared to 24 per cent of British voters overall.
If she wins her seat, Fraser would be far from alone if she praised Trump from the Conservative benches. Fellow PopCon Jacob Rees-Mogg had said he’d ‘rather have Donald Trump than President Biden’. Jake Berry, the last party chairman but two, wants to ‘bring him back’ as Biden has been a ‘disaster’.
Truss has called Trump ‘very nice’ and hopes for a Republican victory (especially as she’s the darling of this month’s Conservative Political Action Conference in the US). But the Nine-Day Queen has stopped short of endorsing the ex-president. Not unusually, she’s lagging behind Boris Johnson. He has claimed a Trump return ‘could be just what the world needs’. He’ll be golfing at Mar-A-Largo before you know it.
Trumpophilia is far from universal amongst Tories. Former MP David Gauke has said it would be ‘extraordinary’ to back Trump based on his froideur towards Nato and the rule of law. Alicia Kearns, Foreign Affairs Select Committee chair, has said it would be ‘mind-blowing’ to support a man who claims the last election was stolen and has been found liable of sexually abusing a woman.
Even the poll of Conservative voters showed 40 per cent would prefer Biden. But there is clearly a chunk of the Tory right that is sweet on the ex-president. It isn’t hard to understand why. Something about Trump reminds me of that other modern American icon, the Big Mac. Gauche, unhealthy, insubstantial – but somehow utterly irresistible. He offers disillusioned Tories a model of success.
The central argument of the Popular Conservatives is that when conservative principles are delivered as policies, they are popular with voters. Just take Margaret Thatcher with the Right to Buy, or Boris Johnson Getting Brexit Done. If Rishi Sunak could just cut taxes, get flights to Rwanda or ditch the Equalities Act and take the fight to the woke, the Tories wouldn’t be facing a landslide defeat.
For those MPs looking covetously across the Atlantic, Trump seems to grasp this much more easily than the Prime Minister. In the White House, Trump passed big tax cuts, signed executive orders protecting America’s history and clamped down on illegal crossings of the southern border. Okay, he might not have actually built that wall. But Sunak hasn’t sent any flights to Rwanda, either.
When Trump tells his supporters he’s going to ‘drill, baby, drill’, it seems much more believable than the Prime Minister’s increasingly desperate pleading that he’ll ‘stop the boats’. Unlike Sunak, Trump seems to have a genuine plan to ‘drain the swamp’ and bypass any institutional resistance he might face. No wonder he’s the one of the pair who seems to be cruising towards a November victory.
Even those Conservatives who find his personal style distasteful and thought 6 January was a disgrace would struggle not to admit that President Trump was anything other than a friend to Britain. Biden can’t stop harping on about his Irish heritage and followed Barack Obama in eschewing a UK trade deal. Trump has always been a big Brexit fan and wants us at the front of the queue.
Biden has presided over an increasingly chaotic global scene since his withdrawal from Afghanistan, and especially following his misguided decision to re-engage with Iran. Trump was the president who killed Qasem Soleimani. He was prophetic in telling European countries to bolster their defences, arm Ukraine, and end their dependence on Russian gas. In short, the West misses him.
As such, the Tory case for Trump is not insubstantial. Fraser may have rowed back on her earlier enthusiasm, Trumpmania remains a minority fad in the UK and hugging close to the ex-president’s campaign is unlikely to help Conservative MPs in their own re-election efforts. But that won’t stop a few of us Tories from being quietly pleased if Trump does a Grover Cleveland and wins back the White House in November.
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