Tag Archives: trump state visit

Trump’s state visit will throw a harsh light on the links between the American and British right.  Proponents of Brexit sought to protect our sovereignty against continental Europeans, but have always been ready to follow the United States.  Daniel Hannan’s book, ‘How We Invented Freedom and Why it Matters’ (2013) proclaimed the supremacy of the English-speaking peoples and the inferiority of others. Nigel Farage is almost as often in Washington as in Westminster. Those around Trump see Britain as a country that ought to be like their America, and that they plan to recapture for their version of freedom.

Much of the right-wing press and its comment contributors are far more familiar with Washington think tanks and American conferences than with political currents in any part of Europe. Climate change denialism, opposition to diversity programmes, dismissal of liberalism in all its aspects, blind faith in lower taxes and fewer public services, all flow across the Atlantic from West to East.  Finance also flows, into the right-wing think-tanks of Tufton Street and other anti-liberal bodies.  Charlie Kirk (sadly now shot in Utah) founded Turning Point UK in 2018 to extend his well-funded campaign to recapture American universities from the ‘liberal elite’ to British campuses.  British politicians and conservative intellectuals are invited to National Conservative conferences; American anti-abortionists train British activists.    Paul Marshall’s ‘Alliance for Responsible Citizenship’ brings together likeminded anti-liberals from across the English-speaking world, with prominent Republicans and hard-right Americans among its speakers.  J. D. Vance’s visit to the Cotswolds this summer, where he met with several of Britain’s leading right-wing figures, showed that the American new right see Britain as part of their natural territory.

An extraordinary Op-ed in the Times on September 8th, by a British journalist – Dominic Green – who writes for the Spectator as well as the Wall Street Journal, set out the US Right’s approach to their ‘special relationship’ with Britain.  ‘The frontier of the American empire is hardening as an economic, military and digital frontier.  America expects Britain to do its duty and remain inside it.’   He reports ‘the view, now unanimous on the American right, that Britain is an accelerated case study in the willed decline of the West. … ‘The Americans cannot afford to lose Britain.  That means they must pressure Britain into line, not just with Trump’s open disapproval at a press conference but by withholding intelligence or slow-walking economic preference.’