Tag: Heseltine

Trumpification

Or, the normalisation of Donald Trump.

I ran today up into the local hills, through a village which hardly exists, though it does have a small school for small people. It clings to the hillside. Steep places, almost too steep. It’s called Thrupp.

We had Donald Trump on a state visit earlier this week. Thrupp. Trump. Four letters in common. Nothing else. Thrupp is on the edge of Stroud, a town with a remarkable sense of community. Trump is transactional, cooperation and community an unfortunate necessity.

Thoughts from my diary, from last Tuesday:

‘Trump is on a state visit, and he’s now almost an accepted part of the scenery, and we’ve adjusted, and the abnormal,  for some amongst us, is almost normal, and we’ve adjusted, and we don’t mind, maybe someone so much in the public eye can’t be so bad, maybe we’ve misjudged a little, and he likes Boris, and Boris will be PM, and we’re being promised an amazing trade deal, and we will be absorbed into more than an alliance, a kind of happy subjugation, but we won’t realise it, it will happen by osmosis, we will be absorbed, and we will have the independence of California if we’re lucky, but a right-wing government more suited to a Texas or South Carolina, and we’ll look across to Europe, just a few miles away, and it will seem further away than the USA three thousand miles away, and we won’t mind, Europe has after all been the source of all our problems, and now tucked under a welcoming American arm, we will be safe and sheltered, and sovereign in special subjugated sort of way, and what’s special, again, is that we won’t notice, we will just slide, with a rictus smile on our faces, and the press, the big media owners, will tutor us into a state of contentment, we will conclude we never knew things any other way, and that will be that. Oh happy days!’

Remember, back in 2016, how Ted Cruz called Trump, ‘a pathological liar’, Mario Rubio called him a ‘con artist’, with ‘a dangerous style of leadership’. Paul Ryan characterised comments by Trump, as ‘the textbook definition of a racist’. He turned, in Rubio’s words, the 2016 election ‘into a freak show’. And where are we now – where are the Republicans now? All lined up, Trump their greatest, their only asset.

We have our shouters. Johnson, Farage. We know them well.

Few among the Tories have stood up to be counted, as Michael Heseltine did at the Peoples’ March a few weeks back. Where is he now? Expelled.

I find the feebleness of mind of Tory MPs, their pusillanimity, their willingness to put party and self before country, extraordinary. Yes, with constituents who were Brexit voters – yes, they have a problem. For the diehards, of course, no problem. But for the wiser majority (am I being too kind?), they should be back in their constituencies, arguing with their voters. Winning them over, if they can. Losing their seats next time, if they must. And, yes, they will have to take on the Telegraph and the Mail.

It isn’t an easy life. The stakes are high.

Will they roll over – and accept the Trumpification of their country?

 

And if we leave?

If you prefer me writing country notes, or you’re American, and you’re not too interested in British or European politics, do give this post a miss! Though there are a good few parallels with Trumpery.

Also, if you’re expecting me to be mild-mannered, and avoid personalities, well, not this time. There is some pretty egregiously bad behaviour out there.

If you read the press and indeed listen to the BBC news you can get depressed, even feel beleaguered if you support staying in the EU. Michael Heseltine’s demolition of Boris Johnson yesterday, primarily over his linking the EU and Hitler’s ambitions, was featured in the Times, but not in the popular press. Heseltine would be ‘very surprised’ if Boris ever became the leader of the party, and that of course is an implicit part of the Brexit agenda. (How left-of-centre Brexit supporters can justify to themselves facilitating a Boris premiership I don’t know.) So however absurd Boris gets, he remains untouchable – and he is of course aware of that.

I don’t believe for a moment that Michael Gove shares Boris’s view of European history. I wonder (to myself only so far!) whether he might just change sides at the last. He is already tainted by association.

I also wonder what will happen if Boris does, after a Cameron resignation, become PM. Would all his party fall into line? I somehow doubt it – the party is badly split.(Just how far will all this mutual abuse extend?)  So he wouldn’t of course command a majority in the Commons, and in the event of an election there’s a very good chance that a pro-EU parliament would be returned. Would the Tories be able to campaign as a single party? If they did and they’re returned as the largest party, but well short of a majority, would they then still try and force through Leave legislation?

Another scenario: Nigel Farage asserts that, if the result is small Stay majority, there will be a clamour for a second referendum. I haven’t heard it from the Stay campaign yet, and I guess they’re too wise to make the comment – but if the result is a small majority for Leave, I expect there will also be a big clamour for … a second referendum.

Oh the joys of uncertainty and chaos!

If we weren’t all so deeply involved, if a potential Brexit hadn’t got calamity written all over it, these would be fascinating times. They will make good history ….