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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6 comments:
I can't ever imagine being this shameless.
Is it just the Telegraph?
There's an astonishing, frankly bizarre display of unity over Greenland on front pages today - even the right wing gutter rags aren't mincing their anti-Trump words.
Something about the Trumpist/Putinist USA's stated intention to fragment Europe back into nation-states, and push (more) takeovers by white Christian ethno-nationalist movements across the continent, seems to be finding some cold feet among the upper classes. Maybe it's not so much any dislike of the end goal, but the upheavals required to get there which have suddenly dawned upon them?
Given that Trumpist USA wants to break up the EU, it would only be fair for Europe to do everything in its power to break up the US - which after all is also a union of states, comprising at least two cultural blocs which haven't looked more distinct or less compatible since the last time that they had a civil war. We could even argue that it's for their own good, since they clearly can't get along.
It is not supposed to be like this. Trump keeps saying out loud what is supposed to be tacit - the US is in charge and will do as it wants but will pretend to be in special relationships. Starmer is probably lying in a dark room, murmmering, 'This can't be happening to me. My pal treating me like this. Make it go away.'
I suppose we should not be surprised at the confusion on the Right. Germany found willing allies in Western Europe when it exercised its might.
I thought I would get my call up papers to go to the Eastern Front but now it looks like I will be in the ice cap of Greenland, without GPS or ammunition since the US hasn't supplied me with it to fight them.
I think there is a basic error here in this criticism. The right believe in nation states, and nation states making decisions right for them. In he same way you might believe your sister has the right to choose her own husband, even if you personally think he's a bit of a twat. Similarly thinking Trump is being reasonable in making decisions in the best interests of the USA doesn't mean those decisions are in the best interests of the UK. What the UK needs to do is develop a sense of its own identity, its own interests, and have a plan for promoting those.
So presumably "the right" would believe in the right of Scotland to secede from the UK, if that were in its own interest; or Catalonia to secede from Spain, if that were in its own interest; or California (and Minnesota, and others) to secede from the USA, if that would serve their interests better?
LOL, of course they don't! Your sister has the right to choose her own husband, in the flimsy analogy that Anon has plumped for, but after that, she becomes part of him; she becomes his property.
The modern dogma of the reactionary right only believes in "nation states" as their boundaries were drawn at some particular period in history: specifically, the period in history which those right-wingers perceive to have been the greatest ebb of the power and dominance of their own ethnic group. Any newer boundaries which seem to dilute or fragment the interests of their ethnic identity, like those of the EU, are aberrations to them. As the present economic and military gorilla of the white Anglophone world, everything should therefore centre on the USA, and countries like Britain (and France, Germany, Spain, etc) should content themselves to be satellites and pawns.
"Identity" and "ethnic homogeneity" are one and the same thing to people like Anon 15:22, and ethnic diversity is only tolerable where all the social power is clearly seen to rest with people who they perceive as being more like themselves. The core of their being is inseparable from the social mechanics and outlook of brutish tribalism. They instinctively - and quite erroneously - believe that as long as people who more resemble themselves are in charge, the interests of people like themselves will be better served.
Which is of course also why they approve of Trump. They recognise themselves in him. And when they write things like "develop a sense of its own identity", it's clear enough that they really mean "return to the identity of the colonial era".
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