Greg Hands is a former Chairman of the Conservative Party, and a former MP for Chelsea and Fulham.
Twenty-three years ago, on 15th February 2003, some 750,000 demonstrated in central London against George W Bush and the imminent US-led invasion of Iraq. The number was the police estimate; the BBC said 1,000,000; the Guardian 1,500,000 and the organisers 2,000,000. Using any of those figures, it was comfortably the largest demonstration in British history. Similar demonstrations occurred across Europe.
Just over ten years later, in October 2015, some 250,000 demonstrated in Berlin against Barack Obama and the proposed US-EU trade agreement, TTIP. There was even a significant demonstration against Barack Obama personally, on his visit to Hanover in April 2016.
I remember all of this quite well.
I accidentally ended up in the Iraq War demonstration for half an hour, having emerged from Embankment station with German visitors, having somehow forgotten it was taking place. I remember my German visitors being shocked at some of the anti-semitism on display in the demonstration, but that is moving away from the point of this article, which is about the European Left’s perception of the United States. On the German demonstrations against Obama and TTIP, I was there in Karlsruhe for the CDU Party Conference in December 2015, when even someone was mild as Chancellor Angela Merkel bemoaned the fact that the largest demonstration that year in Germany had not been against Putin or Iran or even against Climate Change, but against Obama’s TTIP trade agreement.
The history of European demonstrations against US foreign policy much predates these two events.
West Germany saw huge demonstrations against the deployment of Pershing and other cruise missiles in the 1980s. Indeed, this was one of the events marking the origin of the (then pacifist) Green Party. Over a million West Germans participated in those demonstrations on one day alone, 22nd October 1983.
Back even further, in the 1960s, there were regular, large demonstrations outside the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square, London, against the Vietnam War. A young, Rhodes scholar called Bill Clinton attended one of them in 1968.
All of these demonstrations had common features – organised by Leftist groups, but often attracting people with a variety of political views, or citizens not very political at all. They obviously featured hostility to the United States, often against alleged imperialism, idealistic adventurism, war-mongering and capitalist profiteering, frequently involving oil.
Fast forward almost 60 years, and with US action in Venezuela; an explicit desire to take over the world’s largest oil reserves, achieve regime change,; whilst meanwhile there are huge US tariffs on British and European goods; the threat of military action in Greenland, which threatens nobody, and surely we should be expecting enormous Leftist demonstrations against Trump and his foreign policy across European capitals?
There have been no such demonstrations.
The largest demonstration against Trump since his re-election in November 2024 that I can find documented has been one of a few hundred in Frankfurt, in Berlin and in Paris in April 2025, against Trump, Elon Musk and US tariff policy. Tellingly, the protests weren’t organised by the European Left, but by Democrats Abroad, and featured principally US expats. There was a demonstration against Trump’s intentions towards Greenland in Copenhagen earlier this month, but that didn’t appear to be organised by the Left in particular. Similarly, 5,000 gathered in London to protest Trump’s state visit to the UK in September last year. There were some larger demonstrations in Trump’s first term, but the largest was fewer than 100,000 during Trump’s first visit to the UK in July 2018.
By contrast, the largest political demonstration in US history was against Trump – around 4 million people in January 2017 against his first election as US President, also known as the “Women’s March”.
So why has the European and British Left been so quiet? Unlike US action in Vietnam, to defend Europe during the Cold War, or in Iraq, there has not even been an attempt to cover the action in Venezuela using international law, the United Nations, or any need to defend the free world. In Iraq, George W Bush insisted it wasn’t about oil. Trump in Venezuela explicitly says that oil is part of it, and big US companies will play a big role.
I don’t know why the European and British Left is relatively silent at Trump. On 10th January, Jeremy Corbyn called for a demonstration outside Number 10 against the Trump action in Venezuela. Even Socialist Worker claimed only “hundreds” attended.
In short, the European Left has long decried the United States for being rapaciously capitalist and imperialist. The action in Venezuela ought surely to appear to them as prima facie examples of both. Any action in Greenland (where already minerals are part of the talk) would surely be the same. And, further, a 25% tariff on all goods is far more of a trade threat to any possibility that chlorinated chicken might arrive on our fine European dinner plates?
My thinking is that it is precisely because Trump’s action is so brazen that it suits the European Left to let it go unopposed. They have spent 60 years saying that this is what the United States is – capitalist and imperialist – not what I have believed it to be, a force for good in the world, upholding democratic values and standing up for small countries against aggressors. I might be biased, in that I used to work for President George HW Bush back in 1992, but I have long believed in America’s power to create good in the world. 60 years of Leftist demonstrations against the USA haven’t shaken that belief.
So I have concluded that the European Left isn’t demonstrating because they believe that Trump has vindicated what they have always believed. Across front rooms in Hackney, Kreuzberg and Saint Denis, I expect there are many smugly, satisfied voices saying, “We told you so.”
Greg Hands is a former Chairman of the Conservative Party, and a former MP for Chelsea and Fulham.
Twenty-three years ago, on 15th February 2003, some 750,000 demonstrated in central London against George W Bush and the imminent US-led invasion of Iraq. The number was the police estimate; the BBC said 1,000,000; the Guardian 1,500,000 and the organisers 2,000,000. Using any of those figures, it was comfortably the largest demonstration in British history. Similar demonstrations occurred across Europe.
Just over ten years later, in October 2015, some 250,000 demonstrated in Berlin against Barack Obama and the proposed US-EU trade agreement, TTIP. There was even a significant demonstration against Barack Obama personally, on his visit to Hanover in April 2016.
I remember all of this quite well.
I accidentally ended up in the Iraq War demonstration for half an hour, having emerged from Embankment station with German visitors, having somehow forgotten it was taking place. I remember my German visitors being shocked at some of the anti-semitism on display in the demonstration, but that is moving away from the point of this article, which is about the European Left’s perception of the United States. On the German demonstrations against Obama and TTIP, I was there in Karlsruhe for the CDU Party Conference in December 2015, when even someone was mild as Chancellor Angela Merkel bemoaned the fact that the largest demonstration that year in Germany had not been against Putin or Iran or even against Climate Change, but against Obama’s TTIP trade agreement.
The history of European demonstrations against US foreign policy much predates these two events.
West Germany saw huge demonstrations against the deployment of Pershing and other cruise missiles in the 1980s. Indeed, this was one of the events marking the origin of the (then pacifist) Green Party. Over a million West Germans participated in those demonstrations on one day alone, 22nd October 1983.
Back even further, in the 1960s, there were regular, large demonstrations outside the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square, London, against the Vietnam War. A young, Rhodes scholar called Bill Clinton attended one of them in 1968.
All of these demonstrations had common features – organised by Leftist groups, but often attracting people with a variety of political views, or citizens not very political at all. They obviously featured hostility to the United States, often against alleged imperialism, idealistic adventurism, war-mongering and capitalist profiteering, frequently involving oil.
Fast forward almost 60 years, and with US action in Venezuela; an explicit desire to take over the world’s largest oil reserves, achieve regime change,; whilst meanwhile there are huge US tariffs on British and European goods; the threat of military action in Greenland, which threatens nobody, and surely we should be expecting enormous Leftist demonstrations against Trump and his foreign policy across European capitals?
There have been no such demonstrations.
The largest demonstration against Trump since his re-election in November 2024 that I can find documented has been one of a few hundred in Frankfurt, in Berlin and in Paris in April 2025, against Trump, Elon Musk and US tariff policy. Tellingly, the protests weren’t organised by the European Left, but by Democrats Abroad, and featured principally US expats. There was a demonstration against Trump’s intentions towards Greenland in Copenhagen earlier this month, but that didn’t appear to be organised by the Left in particular. Similarly, 5,000 gathered in London to protest Trump’s state visit to the UK in September last year. There were some larger demonstrations in Trump’s first term, but the largest was fewer than 100,000 during Trump’s first visit to the UK in July 2018.
By contrast, the largest political demonstration in US history was against Trump – around 4 million people in January 2017 against his first election as US President, also known as the “Women’s March”.
So why has the European and British Left been so quiet? Unlike US action in Vietnam, to defend Europe during the Cold War, or in Iraq, there has not even been an attempt to cover the action in Venezuela using international law, the United Nations, or any need to defend the free world. In Iraq, George W Bush insisted it wasn’t about oil. Trump in Venezuela explicitly says that oil is part of it, and big US companies will play a big role.
I don’t know why the European and British Left is relatively silent at Trump. On 10th January, Jeremy Corbyn called for a demonstration outside Number 10 against the Trump action in Venezuela. Even Socialist Worker claimed only “hundreds” attended.
In short, the European Left has long decried the United States for being rapaciously capitalist and imperialist. The action in Venezuela ought surely to appear to them as prima facie examples of both. Any action in Greenland (where already minerals are part of the talk) would surely be the same. And, further, a 25% tariff on all goods is far more of a trade threat to any possibility that chlorinated chicken might arrive on our fine European dinner plates?
My thinking is that it is precisely because Trump’s action is so brazen that it suits the European Left to let it go unopposed. They have spent 60 years saying that this is what the United States is – capitalist and imperialist – not what I have believed it to be, a force for good in the world, upholding democratic values and standing up for small countries against aggressors. I might be biased, in that I used to work for President George HW Bush back in 1992, but I have long believed in America’s power to create good in the world. 60 years of Leftist demonstrations against the USA haven’t shaken that belief.
So I have concluded that the European Left isn’t demonstrating because they believe that Trump has vindicated what they have always believed. Across front rooms in Hackney, Kreuzberg and Saint Denis, I expect there are many smugly, satisfied voices saying, “We told you so.”