I doubt I’m alone among Spectator readers in feeling a certain slight but nagging discomfort when I hear those on the left in British politics tearing into the present President of the United States.
Why so? one asks oneself. Have I a shred of sympathy with this monster? No. Can I do other than deplore the attitudes and personal behaviour of this moral toad? Of course not.
Do I for a minute agree with the way he’s handling the presidency – that machine-gun fire of executive orders and constitutional improprieties?’ By no means. Could I by any stretch of the imagination endorse the preposterous policy goals Donald Trump is wont to shout at us in capital letters? Don’t be ridiculous.
And yet. Do I think mass immigration – legal and illegal – in both Trump’s continent and ours has gone too far? I do. Do I admire the instinct to question foreign entanglements and treat with great caution every proposal to advance geopolitical goals by warfare? Yes, from Vietnam to Iraq, Syria and Libya I’ve spent a life in journalism framing the sceptical argument against trigger-happy liberal interventionism.
At home, does the promotion of ‘diversity’ subtly denigrate the very groups whose life-chances it aims to enhance? I believe so. Have I been infuriated for years by the advance of the woke agenda, and the chilling of free speech and argument that has accompanied it? I have.
Do I suspect there’s scope for reducing government waste at every level? As a Conservative supporter I’ve always believed this. Would it be my aim (were I in charge) to cut taxation so citizens and businesses can keep more of what they earn? Undoubtedly. Am I a sceptic on the practical fruit of effort and expenditure on international development? I am. Do I think our continent should spend more on defence? Of course.
Whether or not one would have in the end supported her, didn’t Kamala Harris and her vacuous agenda somehow lower the spirits? Didn’t we feel the force of the Trump campaign’s withering rejection of the emptiness of it all? I did. As surely as I would have voted for her, I would have known she was not the answer to America’s (or Europe’s) problems.
It is now more urgent than ever that conservatism differentiate itself sharply from populism
More generally, and at the philosophical level, can I approve of a politics that aims both to slim and to sharpen public administration, acknowledging the good that government can do, but reversing its half-century-long creep into the nooks and crannies of our own daily lives? You bet.
So why my shudder, as a natural liberal conservative, at the very sight of Mr Trump? Presented, after all, with the long list of questions I’ve framed above, this President (were he capable of concentrating on them for long enough) would surely answer each in more or less the way that I, and I suspect many of my readers, would answer too. Why, then, reject the man himself – because viscerally we do?
Here’s why. Because he’s fouling our conservative nest. Every one of the ideas to which a question mark is appended above will walk abroad with a little less confidence, a little less self-respect because, like the mark of Cain, it now bears the mark of Donald. You wouldn’t want to join a club of which the President of the United States was a member.
Elon Musk’s indiscriminate axing of 30,000 federal public servants is not an argument against a more careful but unrelenting reduction of civil service numbers in Britain. Trump’s kicking his way through constitutional propriety is not an argument against a preparedness to look again at conventions, treaties, institutions and processes we British may be party to, and making a determined case for change. We conservatives should read, not Trump, but Rory Stewart on the misdirected nature of some of our foreign aid. Our scepticism on diversity, inclusion, two-tier recruitment policies and the chilling of free expression in universities and beyond should not be devalued by Trump’s crude attempts at bullying and arm-twisting cultural and educational institutions.
Our belief in the longer-term reduction of taxes on ordinary citizens should not be undermined by a president’s promises to tycoon buddies. And though we British believe that on the whole trade generates wealth, we should not be scared by Trump’s ludicrous tariff lurches into turning our backs on any measure to protect strategic industries or key sectors of our economy.
‘Should not’ I keep writing: and we must indeed stick to our guns. But be under no illusion about the damage Trumpism is doing to the moderate centre-right cause: damage by association with us and damage to us by the left’s dissociation from Trump. This President has energised the lacklustre centre-left Sir Keir Starmer. He has harpooned a Conservative party leader in Canada. Bigger factors than Trump have been in play in last week’s surge of the Australian Labor party at their Liberal party’s expense, but in a country horribly dependent on trade with China, Labor’s Anthony Albanese has been enabled to look sturdier and less dull against the background of posturing US populism. Across the world the left and centre-left have been firm in their repudiation of a disgusting US presidency. It’s been easier for them; harder, worldwide for an embarrassed right.
Harder here, too. I see a lesson in our embarrassment. It is now more urgent than ever that conservatism differentiate itself sharply from populism. It’s not true that Nigel Farage is to the right of Kemi Badenoch. He’s not on the right at all. He’s on a different spectrum. He’s a populist. So is Trump, which is why the two men incline towards each other. Proper conservatives have ideological and economic instincts. Populists believe in nothing beyond tickling their supporters’ fancies. This can some-times get them elected, but once elected they crash.
American Republicans, who also have instincts, will in time bitterly regret hitching their wagon to a man whose only instinct was for applause. However deep our Tory party’s despair after last week’s local elections, it must avoid the sugar-rush of a deal with Reform. Like Trump, Farage would soil the conservative nest.
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