Following Exiting the United States, the UK Felt Like a Refuge from Trump’s Make America Great Again Campaign. Now, I Wonder: For How Long?

Around last year, I had just returned back to the UK from the US and was enjoying the almost widespread envy of US-based acquaintances. While they were looking down the barrel of a another Trump presidency with its guarantee of turmoil and division, we had voted in Keir Starmer by a huge majority and were feeling quite satisfied with ourselves. I remember people complimenting me on the foresight of my move, which I certainly embraced even though political considerations hadn’t been part of my choice.

Emergence of Reform UK

Maybe the answer to that is Nigel Farage and his movement, which has in some way managed to harness the frustration, disillusionment and shame felt by large numbers of people who backed and were then disappointed by Brexit, and are now in pursuit of another movement to ignite. To this extent, the origins of the nationalist rally last weekend and the growth of Reform generally seem broadly of a pattern with their US precursors.

This represents a scenario, at least in part, of people grasping at anything that promises to rip up a system that has repeatedly fallen short to serve them.

What has felt shocking to a lot of us this year, however, is how quickly the environment seems to have transformed in this nation, and how a leader as frivolous as Farage could convince anyone to follow him anywhere, much less in the path of No 10.

Superficial Figureheads and Public Mockery

And by lightweight, I don’t mean in the Trump/Boris Johnson style. You can dislike those men while recognising their skill as mass communicators. Farage, by comparison, is a buffoon, a grinning clown openly mocked to his face by Democrats in Congress earlier this month when he arrived, at the invitation of Republicans, to give evidence before a House judiciary committee on freedom of expression.

Farage did not arrange the ‘unite the kingdom’ rally on Saturday, of course; that was Tommy Robinson, the former BNP member with convictions for assault, drug possession and deception – facts that, British broadcasters were at great effort to point out on Monday morning, should not tar all those who participated at his march with the same stigma.

Similarities and Divergences with the American Right-Wing Scene

Americans will recognise this as a turning point: a similar moment to that phase of Trump’s rise in support during which his followers were given countless sympathetic portrayals in the US national press, and invited to explain why supporting a man who said monstrous things did not make them in the least bit self-serving or monstrous.

Meanwhile, the breakneck speed of Reform and Robinson’s rise means that the nation Trump is visiting this week is seemingly very changed to the one he went into business with in January. There may be a point when the US president stops to admire his own work, and he will certainly be pleased to see British white nationalists rising in influence.

But he is also a man who rejects and is eager to distance himself from “losers” – a group into which, perhaps, his ally the prime minister currently falls, and who we can assume he will abandon as quickly as he championed him.

Future Outlook: Momentum and Cultural Differences

For the rest of us, it is a question of waiting to see how much traction our own incarnation of the Maga movement will have. There are key differences between the two nations that leave some voter bases who came out in the US for Trump without exact British counterparts.

• British far-right ideology references to the religious institutions as an influence, but evangelical Christianity has no purchase in a country where, historically, foxhunting is a bigger wedge issue than reproductive rights.
• I cannot see JD Vance’s pronatalist stances, based in his fervent Catholicism, being much of a goer here, either.

Actually – and this may be sheer jingoism on my part – Vance appears to be the kind of American who even Britons on the extreme right might regard intuitively as a unsettling little piece. On the other hand, if enough people are willing to swear loyalty to a thug or an opportunistic pub bore, these are differences that may hardly matter.