The Softness of the Hard Right

Blimey. On Friday, Keir Starmer put out a statement that said "no" to the White House. The language wasn't tough and it did play into the fantasy that Russia is a threat in the north Atlantic, but it also said applying tariffs on NATO members supporting Greenland is "completely wrong". And, for legal eagles of international law, arguably a breach of the first four articles of the alliance's founding document. Emmanuel Macron was somewhat tougher in France's statement, and the EU collectively have threatened €93bn worth of tariffs and scrapping the US/EU trade deal if the heavy arm-twisting/bullying continues. As Donald Trump might say, it makes for great television.

Fresh from sacking Robert Jenrick, Kemi Badenoch is backing Starmer. As are the sovereignty maximalists and Brexit supporters of this country's right. Right? Conspicuously, Nigel Farage - who was due on Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday morning - cried off. Was he ill? Did he want to avoid a face-to-face clash with Zack Polanski? Or might questions over his Greenland whataboutery and Trump cronyism cause him embarrassment, and help that recent dip in the polls pick up momentum? Farage is not alone in his equivocation over American provocations, however. Last week, Tim Stanley was at it.

In his wretched piece, Stanley pushes the usual peace-through-strength rubbish, in the context of Trump's pirate raid on Venezuela. But rather than Britain attempting to project power, he advocates for a position that his employers at The Telegraph would ordinarily frown on: an almost Corbynist position. He writes, "We cannot defend Ukraine. We might, if we try very hard, be able to, say, construct a decent system of care for the elderly." But this is in the context of saying bon voyage to any influence in foreign affairs. Not so bad, you might think, considering the centuries of Albion's perfidy but what Stanley is trusting in is letting the USA tear around the world as it sees fit. Greenland, Venezuela, Ukraine, they're no concern of ours. We'll sit by ourselves in splendid isolation.

Why are the hard right soft on Trump? Our old friend Peter Mandelson spelled it out last week. The British state, and particularly its military, is integrated into the US projection of global power to such a degree that its operations, as a matter of course, need Washington's nod. The so-called independent nuclear deterrent cannot be supplied without US support, let alone launched. And because the City remains the key global centre of finance, the dominant wing of British capital is highly internationalised but, in the main, bound up with US capital. Sections of the ruling class are so compromised, particularly its most class conscious sections - which just so happen to be the ones (rhetorically) obsessed with sovereignty. They rightly see the US as the main protector of their interests, because they're so closely intertwined. It means that much of the right, most overtly the Tory press and Reform, can at best be ambivalent and at worse outright apologists for Trump's antics. Hence dullards like Stanley who argues that an American world is fine, even one as brutal as Trump's USA, is entirely fine with him and his employers.

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