Conversations with my housemate are always a delight.
They range from the mundane – “Would you like to go for a run tomorrow morning?” – via the surreal – “Where have all the forks gone?” – to the fascinating. To the latter camp I add her recent impromptu declaration that the election of J. D. Vance as Vice-President of the United States is “the most important thing to happen to the British Right in the last fifty years”.
My initial response involved a little incredulity. Margaret Thatcher becoming Tory leader? Brexit? Nigel Farage surviving a plane crash? Readers will each be able to come up with half a dozen suggestions straight away. But as I watched yesterday’s inauguration, an attentive provincial looking on at the imperial capital, I couldn’t help but feel that she might just be right.
Of course, Vance was only a co-star in yesterday’s pomp and ceremony. This was the Day of the Donald. I was a year out from sitting my GCSEs when he first descended that great gold escalator and announced his Presidential ambitions. Since then, I have found it impossible not to be engrossed, through elections, impeachments, assassination attempts, and so, so many memes.
Back in 2016, as a self-declared ‘social and economic liberal’, I had to make clear as my year’s token Tory Brexiteer that I wholly disapproved of this gauche and obnoxious embodiment of everything we civilised Europeans dislike about our American confreres: the brashness, the bigotry, the burgers. But now I have no such hesitations: thank God for Donald Trump.
That was certainly the message the 45th and 47th President wanted the world to take from his inaugural address. Describing those shocking scenes in Pennsylvania last year, Trump explained that he believed his life had been spared from the assassin’s bullet for a reason. “He was saved by God to make America great again”. From this moment on, he swore, “America’s decline is over”.
As Joe Biden and Kamala Harris looked on gloomily, Trump first denounced their record and then set about tearing it up. As “the golden age of America begins”, he began the process of issuing dozens of executive orders, ranging from quitting the Paris climate accord to declaring an emergency at the country’s southern border and ending automatic citizenship for the children of illegals.
This was the start of what Trump bills as his “revolution of common sense”. Yesterday was “liberation day”. He promised that “American will reclaim its rightful place, as the greatest, most powerful, most respected nation on Earth”. This time, there was far less about American carnage and far more about American greatness. Drill, baby, drill! The deportations commence at dawn.
The President has never been a stranger to hyperbole. There’s every chance that his agenda might collapse under its contradictions: the tensions within the new fusionism of tech bros and post-libs, his dream of being a “peacemaker and unifier” against his quasi-imperial ambitions in Panama and Greenland, and his pursuit of prosperity against his tendresse for tariffs.
But that is for tomorrow. What one couldn’t escape yesterday is that same je ne sais quoi that has made it impossible to write off the Donald for the last decade. He possesses a vitality. He is a great man of history, the weltgeist embodied, a world historical figure blessed to live in the age of reality television and long format podcasts. Alexander would have loved going on Joe Rogan.
From this side of the Atlantic, the contrast between America’s new government and our own is all the more stark. One cannot imagine Keir Starmer declaring that God has chosen him to colonise Mars. But as the twenty-year divergence between our living standards and those of the United States becomes even wider, I can’t help but wish we had a Prime Minister who would.
Starmer is yesterday’s man, a survivor of Rome’s fall paying homage to a barbarian President that few doubt he despises. Rachel Reeves prays that his demands for 5 per cent defence spending never materialise. David Lammy tries to wish away a decade’s worth of running his mouth off. Whatever had been Labour’s hopes for government, Trump is inescapable, and devastating.
The post-1945 world order is collapsing, betrayed as the American imperium that it always ways. When the tide goes out, you can tell who was skinny dipping; as America joins China and Russia in seeking to overturn the ‘liberal international order’, rather than enforce it, Europe’s impotence and Britain’s vassalage become even more obvious. Our prophet went unheeded.
Trump’s first victory could be treated as a hiccup at the end of history. He was unready for office, unsure of his agenda, and unable to staff his administration. But this time he leads a concerted counter-revolutionary operation. ‘Trumpism’ has thinkers and functionaries to go with its millions of supporters. Their objective is regime change and the permanent repudiation of liberalism.
If the President is a headache for Labour, he should serve as an example for the Conservative Party. When power is combined with the will to act, it is possible to put back the clock. We should not just twiddle our thumbs in the face of the Left’s onward march but reverse it. Clear out the Augean stables; retire the government; drain the swamp. Deport, drill, and build, build, build.
This is why Vance is so interesting. He provides the intellect to Trump’s instinct. He is not only the first ‘post-liberal’ to reach the White House but is plugged into the New Right on both sides of the Atlantic. If Trump’s Presidency is the success that he hopes, Vance will be his odds-on successor, and the chances of the counter-revolution bedding in will increase exponentially.
This would provide a model for a future war on the Blob. But if our party had wanted Anglo-Trumpism, we would have voted for Robert Jenrick. Tory history reached its turning point and failed to turn. Just as Starmer’s Weltanschauung is now defunct, Kemi Badenoch is peddling the politics of Thomas Sowell in the age of Curtis Yarvin. ‘Classical liberalism’, not Eisen und Blut.
I surrender to no one in my love of Stepping Stones. But if we focus too much on learning the lessons of 1975, we will miss the lessons of 2025. As ambiguous as Trump’s relationship to Project 2025 was, the Conservatives should aim to produce our own Project 2029: recruiting talent, scoping out a legislative agenda, and uniting our party around our coming Meiji Restoration.
If Trump stumbles and fails, this would be discredited. Yet it appears as if British politics is tracking its American equivalent at a delay of four years or so: for Trump in 2016 take Boris Johnson in 2019, for Biden in 2020 take Starmer in 2024, for Trump in 2024 take…Well, that depends. One hopes it is Badenoch. But Farage looks the more likely avatar for the Brave New Right.
For now, ConservativeHome wishes our Atlantic cousins well. The United States can be infuriating. Snobbish disdain has long replaced my teenage Whiggism. But as they embark on their quest for national greatness, one can’t help but feel a twinge of jealousy as Trump and Vance give the Overton Window one all-mighty push. Young man, there’s no need to feel down…