How to understand the rise of populist politics? In a time of unprecedented social peace, how can large numbers of people turn away from the sensible, managerial mainstream and find the simple answers of crackpots and charlatans beguiling? How is it a third of French voters supported a fascist last Sunday? How did we get President Donald Trump? All kinds of explanations are in play, but the one that’s done the running is anxiety, which is usually (and unhelpfully) separated out into economic and cultural anxiety. This has spawned an interminable zero-sum debate over what matters the most and, as per political debates, there are other stakes in play. If the economic argument is correct, then the Clintonian/Blairist and the still-shiny Macronite Third Way is wonky flimflam and the socialist critique, including emphasis on the importance of interests, is substantially correct. And if cultural anxiety is the explanation, then all the pundits and leading politicians are on the money, we have to carry on listening to them, and the horrible stuff about class and things can be boxed away. Continue reading
Posted in US & Canada
“Doing something” about Syria
“Something has to be done!” goes up the cry every time an abominable war crime surges over the newswires, but the question has to be what and how. Throughout yesterday, following Donald Trump’s bombardment of the Syrian government airfield apparently used for the chemical attack on Idlib province, we saw implacable foes of the White House freak show rush to back up the US administration. “Today was the day Trump became the president” went one egregiously arse licking headline, and all of a sudden the investigation of the dodgy links to Russia, and the awful domestic programme are compartmentalised and held in abeyance. Colour me surprised? Not in the slightest. Continue reading
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Opposing Trump can unite the left after Brexit
David Frum’s article in The Atlantic “How to Build an Autocracy” not surprisingly gained a great deal of attention because of the all too plausible way that it highlighted how the constitutional checks and balances of the US political system can fail, if those whose job is to exercise those checks and balances instead find that conformity to presidential power serves their personal ambitions better. But also because Frum is himself a Republican insider, a former speechwriter for President George W Bush, and has an insider’s insight into the processes.
In particular, Frum shows how strategy of delegitimisation of critical journalism is used to seek to silence dissent. For example Trump’s attempt to shut out CNN for having told the truth, by the staggering accusation that they were the purveyors of fake news. Continue reading
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The Tories and the Special Relationship
Stoke-on-Trent might be the centre of the political universe, but that isn’t to say tumultuous events don’t take place outwith the gilded city limits. And while by-election fever and an altogether unpleasant illness have gripped me, Donald Trump marked his first week in the Oval Office by unleashing a hurricane-level shit storm. His “temporary” travel ban on people born in seven Muslim countries where Trump happens to have no business interests drew near unanimous condemnation. And yet he found backing from Boris Johnson in the Commons this afternoon. The foreign secretary said this isn’t as bad as his pledges on the campaign trail and that means his bark is worse than his bite, and so we should be thankful. Just how we should thank racists for firebombing one Mosque as opposed to two, or the EDL for beating up an Asian kid instead of tearing up a town centre. May is no better. Her craven performance as the first overseas courtier to meet the new president was, remarkably, regarded as something of a coup across the official commentariat and established media. How fast things change. Dismissing Trump’s travel ban merely as a “matter for the Americans” speaks for the moral vacuity at the heart of her project. Continue reading
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Trump exempts British citizens from “Muslim ban” after pressure from UK
Donald Trump conceded ground to opposition last night by exempting British dual citizens from his Executive Order, dubbed by many as a ‘Muslim ban’, which prohibits any entry to the United States from seven majority-muslim countries, namely, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Yemen and Libya.
After Theresa May instructed Amber Rudd and Boris Johnson to lobby their US counterparts, the policy seems to have relaxed marginally, as the Foreign Office confirmed that the ban will only apply to British dual citizens flying directly from the countries identified, meaning that dual citizens could fly from the UK or another, unaffected country. It will still, however, prevent millions of Muslims from the seven countries from travelling to the US at all. Continue reading