I got into a bit of a row with a Trump fan the other day. It’s easily done.
He sat next to me in a crowded airport lounge as I was on the phone with Fiona, and though I talk quietly in public places, my new neighbour clearly overheard the part where I vented about the latest evidence of the president’s corruption, and the words “total fucking crook, surrounded by absolute fucking creeps” may have gently passed my lips.
Then when I said the problem was that he had deliberately destroyed international institutions, so the world lacked coordinated global leadership, the loud snort to my right indicated my neighbour might be American.
“So you don’t think our president is a global leader?” he said after the call ended. “He is certainly that,” I replied. “But he has ruined global institutions and alliances, and made the world a much more dangerous place.”
“And your country is doing sooooo well,” he replied, sarcastic whataboutery to the fore. “How is Starmer doing? Here today, gone tomorrow, huh?”
I showed him a graphic that has Trump slightly behind Lukashenko of Belarus and just ahead of North Korea’s Kim Jong Un in a world leader popularity survey, topped by Volodymyr Zelensky, Mark Carney and Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum. And these were your fellow Americans being surveyed, I told my unimpressed American. Snort.
I tried another one. As long ago as last spring, in another global survey, only in India, Nigeria, Kenya, Hungary and Israel did a majority say they trusted Trump “to do the right thing.” The shattering consequences of his war in Iran may have seen further decline on that front too, I suggested.
Then, when he suggested the only threat to Nato was “the unreliability of our allies,” I’m afraid I lost my shit, as I believe the Americans term a hot-tempered response to a provocation.
“Try telling that to the families of the Brits, Danes, Aussies, French, Germans and all the rest killed and injured in Afghanistan and Iraq.” That is the polite version.
I then gave a full-throated explanation for the widespread reluctance to have supported Trump on Iran, the chief cause of the “unreliability” in MAGA eyes. “Maybe if he hadn’t gone on about taking Greenland and Canada, and consulted one or two people outside his sycophants, he might have got a different response.”
My four years of podcasting under the slogan “disagree agreeably” means it is a while since I have really lost it, sufficient to realise it was wise to claim my flight was being called, and head for the door. But given I have decided to avoid Trump’s US as best I can, even with Scotland at the World Cup, I feel it is important to educate the MAGA crowd that while the cult may be alive and well-ish among their own crowd in their own homeland, their soft power is absolutely cratering virtually everywhere else.
Even more annoying than the way the MAGA crowd talk up Trump’s America is how they talk down Europe.
Of course America has enormous strengths, is leading the world in sectors that will shape our future, has some great people, culture, landscapes, towns, cities and history. But if you pitch Europe’s people, culture, landscapes, towns, cities and history against that of the US, I think we win.
My flight was to Milan, for an event in Brescia. I knew very little about Brescia, beyond the fact that it existed. My God, what a beautiful place.
I went out in search of my Tree of the Day and within minutes stumbled upon well-kept Roman ruins, complete with a Unesco preserved Roman theatre, museums to match those in far bigger cities, stunning street art, churches so beautiful I almost found the aforementioned God. It must surely be unique in having two cathedrals in the same square.
Added to which it was impossible to find a bad cup of coffee, while the food in the local restaurants was just the best. Europe. Beats the US any day.
The event was called Future Proof Society and my task was to try to make sense of modern politics. Not easy.
I was inevitably quizzed about the situation back home. I was asked how it felt for the UK to have become “the Italy of today,” a reference to the days when we used to think Italy was a bit of a joke because of their constant changing of prime ministers.
A fair point, given we have had six since Brexit and we might well have a seventh before the summer is out, whereas Italy’s current PM, Giorgia Meloni, has already served longer than any of ours since David Cameron.
That being said, I retorted, we used to think no World Cup was imaginable without Italy. This time, in a tournament with more countries taking part than ever, Italy is not among them, whereas Scotland and England most definitely are.
Yes, I still see Tony Blair. Yes, I was aware he was writing a big take on the Labour Party. No, (unusually!) he didn’t send me a draft of his 5,000-word essay, which provoked a huge, very mixed, reaction.
At least he did generate a debate, and Keir Starmer’s 3,000-word response on Substack was a clearer exposition of what his government is doing and stands for than we have seen for some time.
So what would I have said if Tony had sent me a draft, and what have I said to him since it was published? That it was good to see he was still capable of painting a big picture, and that I agreed with much of his analysis, some of his criticisms, some of his ideas. That the timing, however, was far from perfect.
He would have replied – indeed he did – that you can always question the timing of anything, but if there was going to be a challenge to Keir Starmer, it was vital there was a real policy debate, and he feared that was lacking in the contributions made so far by any of the would-be contenders.
I agree with that, and agree too that the party needs a kick up the rear end, but think it would have been better to inject his own thinking into the debate if and when there was an actual contest, not the phoney phase we are in now. He worries perhaps that if Andy Burnham wins the Makerfield by-election, there will be a challenge to Starmer, a coronation, and no real debate at all.
Suggested Reading
A whole lot of Americans still support Donald Trump – why?
Where I would have taken a red pen, had I had the chance, was to the section on net zero, which had several false choices, no real solutions to the energy crisis, and ignored the costs to health, industry and society if we fail to tackle the climate crisis. The biggest false choice is that you can have either clean energy or cheap energy.
The main reason prices are so high is the volatility of a global fossil fuel market on which we are still too dependent, volatility exacerbated by Donald Trump’s war in Iran, on which Tony criticised our lack of support. I would definitely have cut that part.
I also worry he is so taken with the genius of the tech bros that he sometimes fails to see the potential downsides of AI. On that, I recommend two other important recent publications; Alan Milburn’s NEET review; and the even longer, far, far longer, contribution by Tony’s spiritual leader, Pope Leo, whose 235-page encyclical on AI, Magnifica Humanitas, is as good a critique of capitalism, and as fine a presentation of decent centre left values, as I have read since… well, since the 1997 Labour manifesto!
