Got back to work today after a break in the Netherlands. Tired. So I apologise if this is rather unstructured and waffly.
So, an American friend writes:
What the hell is going on over there?Which got me thinking about the similarities, and differences, between Brexit & the Conservative Party (hereafter Tories), and Trump & the Republic Party (hereafter the GOP).
In summary, at one level it's basically the same thing, at another level it's a different thing, and in the end it's the same thing.
So... The Tories have, in a very short space of time, metamorphosed from a "conservative" party into a right-wing populist party. Which is ironic, as the intention of the PM who called the EU Referendum, David Cameron, was a modernising conservative who wished to lance the boil of Euro-scepticism in his party once and for all. And doubly ironic, because the populists within the party were in the minority before the Referendum, and probably didn't even consider themselves to be populists at the time.
(
In brief there were, as Ian Dunt said, two shades of Tory Euro-scepticism*, one legalistic (not wishing to give up legal powers to the EU) -- a naturally "Conservative" view -- and one opportunistic, blaming anything and everything on the EU, more often than not simply lying to make the case. The current PM was paid good money by the Daily Telegraph - a once conservative, now populist, newspaper to commit these lies to print.
When 'Leave' won the referendum the new PM declared that "We're all Brexiteers now", told the newly triumphant Brexit wing of her party they could have everything they wanted (namely no EU laws, and fewer foreigners), then later came back from Brussels with an exit deal the populists hated, and both the PM & the Deal got dumped. Boris Johnson wanted the PMs job more than anything, realised taking a populist approach would get him elected (the membership of the Conservative party is small -- only ~160,000 -- but far more Eurosceptic than its MPs), and filled the Government with either rabid Eurosceptics (Leadsom, Raab, Rees-Mogg) or cowardly careerists (Rudd, Morgan, Hunt, Williamson) who were against 'No Deal' (i.e. crash-out) Brexit (see here for details on the impacts of that)
)
So, at one level exactly like the Trump takeover of the GOP. The populist wing was small, but a leader willing to play on populism came along, and suddenly the machinery of the party swung behind him because they were too scared to call out his shit (except the 22 who did that yesterday and have been kicked out of the party**)
However, I'd argue a key difference is that Trump took over the GOP from within. It was, frankly, amazing. He came along with nothing but chutzpah and self-belief, and won. He's a scumbag, but you've got to be impressed by the way he simply rocked up and took ownership of the party from pretty much a standing start, with no obvious base.
Whereas, for some time, and certainly from 2010 onwards, there was an external driver that pretty much forced the Tories to embrace hardline Euro-scepticism, and now populism. UKIP and it's successor, the Brexit Party, are in a simple place. No severance deal any UK Prime Minister could agree with the EU would ever be 'hard' enough for them. So with the Tories having embraced Brexit, it was easy for Nigel Farage and his merry band of iconoclasts (with the help of a small but rabid gang of sympathisers within the Tory Party) to perpetually push the Tories to further and further extreme positions. First they stole natural Tory voters, which forced Cameron to call an referendum (which he mistakenly believed would neutralise UKIP), then they pushed his successor Theresa May into a set of disastrous red-lines in 'exit & future state' negotiations with the EU which she could never wholly deliver on, and now, finally, they have taken over the entire Tory Party, via Boris Johnson, who has no particular desire of any kind, other than to be Prime Minister, but sees aping the Brexit Party as the only way to secure that ambition. Climate change denial (a UKIP staple), and prejudice against foreigners, Muslims and homosexuals is all in the pipeline. We just haven't see it yet.
Boris isn't Trump. Farage is Trump. (Farage has far more similarities with Trump. Rich but not establishment Father. Wide-boy image. (No idea what the American version of a "wide boy" is called). Loud and obnoxious, and iconoclastic. Boris Johnson is establishment through-and-through, his populism is opportunistic. Farage, like Trump, might spout a load of shite, but he believes in the shite he spouts)
So, at a slightly deeper level, Trump takeover of GOP is different from Farage takeover of Tories, because Trump was internal and opportunistic, whereas Farage has been waging a (ultimately successful) guerrilla war against "conservatives" for decades.
But
Obviously the underlying drivers are the same. Trump's victory (against establishment and status quo Clinton) and 'Leave' victory against establishment and status quo 'Remain' were both driven by a mixture of nativism but also the wish to give the establishment a kick in the arse. ("ass". You get it). Nativism alone isn't enough -- only around 30% of the UK population hate the EU so badly they are willing to leave under any circumstances -- but combine nativism with distrust of politicians and lack of wage growth, and you have the perfect compost for populism to take root.
So, yeah, it's all the same, really.
Just don't ask me what will happen next. In either country.
Did that help?
* Left-wing Euro-scepticism, which Jeremy Corbyn, the Leader of the Opposition, has embraced for decades is different, and basically revolves around the fact that socialists (as opposed to social democrats) see the EU as fundamentally capitalist and therefore irredeemable. By unhappy coincidence such people are running the Labour Party for the first time since 1983.
** Maybe. Legally, maybe not
