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.’
Against the background of the Wall Street Journal reporting that Britain is becoming a ‘failed state’, with others suggesting that our streets are unsafe and our cities swamped by Muslim immigrants, we await what on earth Trump and others may say during his state visit. Charlie Kirk’s murder and the inflammatory reactions of President Trump and many other Republicans to it, as well as Trump’s continuing ambiguity towards Russian aggression against Ukraine and Israeli behaviour in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, will make this visit a tricky few days for Starmer and the Labour government. Ed Davey took the right decision to stay away from meeting the leader of the illiberal world.
Liberal democracy is under serious threat. There are those on America’s intellectual right who now in effect reject the Enlightenment, who seek authority rather than reason and hierarchy rather than democracy. Liberals in Britain have to argue the case for open society, for an understanding of free speech in which toleration of differences and concern for civility and evidence set limits to outrage, misinformation and prejudice, and for state action that accepts constitutional limits and promotes social and economic harmony. That will also be good tactics in presenting ourselves as the liberal opposite to the man the American right hopes may become the UK’s next prime minister: Nigel Farage.
* William Wallace is LibDem peer, a former vice-chair of the Federal Policy Committee and convenor of the party's 1997 manifesto team.
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6 Comments
Fully agree with this article’s outlining of our liberal position of understanding free speech to involve a toleration of differences. We can expect people to have completely opposing views on the issues we as a society face, but everyone should be free to express those views – that is the essence of democracy. I do worry when I see groups of students, for example, trying to prevent speakers, whose ideas they oppose, being able to share their views on campus with students who wish to hear them. That is as illiberal as it comes.
Exactly, Brenda. It’s not the Charlie Kirks of the world that are behind cancel culture. The liberal left does itself no favors with the kind of reactions and demonstrations to his presence and arguments. As we’ve seen here, it’s been universities and political parties dragged through employment tribunals due to their intolerance of widely held beliefs that individuals have spoken in support of.
If Charlie Kirk wasn’t part of cancel culture why have so many people lost their jobs for making tasteless or insensitive remarks about his assassination?
In 2016 Charlie Kirk set up the McCarthyite ‘Professor WatchList’ in order to harass and intimidate left-leaning academics. Many professors on the list subsequently received racist abuse, rape and death threats. A believer in freedom of speech doesn’t compile and promote lists of ideological enemies to be harassed and threatened with violence.
@Andrew Melmoth
I suspect people who have lost their jobs for posting comments celebrating the assassination of someone they detest, have lost their jobs for their unacceptable conduct and the reputational damage their employers may suffer if they had not taken the action they did. This is not evidence of Charlie Kirk being involved in cancel culture as you imply – it is evidence of employers acting, reasonably, in response to unacceptable conduct by employees.
– Brenda Will
I’m not talking about private companies – I’m talking about MAGA Republicans firing people from government posts.
Are you aware that FBI agents are being fired for not voting for Trump in 2025? Charlie Kirk was a supporter of a movement that is firing people simply for the crime of being loyal to the constitution.
The whole purpose of Kirk’s ‘Professor WatchList` was to intimidate academics into leaving their jobs or pressurise universities into firing them. The awful tragedy of his death doesn’t mean we shouldn’t recognise the nature of the politics he peddled.
Andrew Melmoth you are right to point out Charlie Kirk’s extreme views and to tell us about his attempts to counter any opposition, though he was much more able than Trump (and willing) to enter into debate. Trump’s actions are clearly cancel culture and opposed to free speech and indeed free investigations by journalists and lawyers. Both are a danger to our democracy and to the world.
As to Farage, I remember those councillers and others in the area where I live, who still hold right wing views, but abandoned UKIP because they said they hated Farage’s dictatorship within the party. A few leftwingers want authoritarianism but currently there are far more rightwingers who want exactly that.