The Men Who Promised Trump Would Save Britain Have Gone Terribly Quiet
Certainty was loud when it was convenient. Accountability, apparently less so.
I have said very stupid things in the past. It even happened just yesterday. I think it’s human to be overconfident about something, run your mouth and then go “oh, shit”, I really didn’t have that right.
To my mind, the normal reaction is to do a quick stock take, see where you went wrong, apologise, correct and then move on.
Most adults learn this fairly early on. Public commentators, one would hope, especially so. There’s a concept that has been on my mind a fair bit this week in light of «gestures wildly» everything that’s happening in the world.
The concept of certainty, and how it’s been treated by the powers that be.
Certainty that’s big chested, declarative and is known to come from a very specific group of British politicians and right-wing commentators who have assured us - again and again and again - that Donald J. Trump, the rising tyrant in the United States was not merely survivable, but preferable. Good for the United Kingdom, even.
There were no caveats placed on these statements - no “risky, but manageable” or “problematic, but preferable” or even “we may have to sacrifice some things to get others.”
No. None of that. He was an unimpeachable win for the United Kingdom as a country. They were so certain of these statements, they put them into print, time and time again.
Boris Johnson, that lying bin-bag of hot air and blonde hair, our ex-Prime Minister proclaimed that the world itself would be “more stable” under Trump - not safer despite him - safer because of him. Anyone who raised a sceptical left eyebrow at this was met with scorn, and marked as members of a trembling “global wokerati1”, as if the inherent instability that everyone has noted in DJT since 2016 was nothing more than a personality flaw that wouldn’t translate into unpredictability and open hazard to the world2.
Matthew Lynn, another one of the Specator/Telegraph set, took it even further, declaring that Trump had “proved” that Brexit was the best decision we ever made. He tells us the UK would escape the punitive tariffs that have been imposed on the EU and not only that, but EU manufacturing might even relocate here3! Brexit Britain, being painted as basking in the orange glow of Trumpian favour.
Everyone’s favourite hatstand possessed by the malignant ghost of a Victorian Industrialist, Jacob Rees-Mogg, made promises that Trump would be “our greatest ally after Brexit” - that being “Freed from ties to the EU” we, the plucky little nation that we are, could finally build that special relationship into something truly great.
And as the final part of this inillustrious quartet, Nigel Farage, a man not known for half-measures, just last year insisted terribly proudly that he had “never wavered” in his support for Donald Trump - this was said at the US launch of GB news, and in the tones of a man who honestly believes that unwavering loyalty to a felonious strongman is a virtue in and of itself.
When you start pulling all of these bits and pieces together (and to note, there are many, many more examples of these), it starts to feel reminiscent of a certain 1930s Rothermerian stance on rising authoritarianism - certainly not identical, no, but recognisable enough to make you shift a bit uncomfortably in your seat4.
Looking back at these now, I can’t help but feel a sense of what can only be described as deep, cringeing embarrassment.
Not for these commentators and politicians, mind you - I doubt that any of these men have the required level of self-reflection needed to feel anything beyond cocky certainty - but for the state of public commentary that allowed this level of boorishness over facts to not just go unchallenged, but to be actively rewarded.
None of these statements were based on any real analysis, and each one of them was open cheerleading for a known conman.
What annoys me to the damned back teeth though isn’t necessarily that these people were wrong - as already established, everyone gets things wrong, with the difference being that when most adults realise that they are wrong, or that they’ve badly misjudged something, they pause and maybe even say “oh, shit - I got that one wrong. Whoopsie.”, and then adjust accordingly.
That particular instinct however appears to have completely vanished in some sections of society, and especially so when someone acquires column inches and an audience. In this case, instead of reflection and self-awareness, we get amnesia, bluster and gaslighting.
Because that certainty that was so very present when these voices sold Trump to the British public as a stabilising force, a strategic ally, a gift to post-Brexit Britain, have quietly dissolved into vagueness.
All I can now hear are vague mutterings about “complex geopolitics” and the suggestion that no-one could possibly predicted just how tits up things would go. How utterly unknowable some things just are. That events have, unexpectedly, overtaken us.
Which is not true. Not even a bit.
All of this was predicted - repeatedly and loudly. The warnings delivered were stark, yet were dismissed at the time as hysterical, naive, Anti-American or, as per Boris Johnson, part of that dreaded “global wokerati.”
The fact of the matter is that Donald Trump did not suddenly become volatile, nor did he just recently discover coercion as a tool. He did not wake up one morning in Mar-a-Lago and think to himself “yes, I’ll start treating allies as leverage to get what I want.”
What we’re seeing now is who he has always been, unplugged, unfiltered and without guard rails. It was visible from the outset - and this is why the silence from his cheerleaders is now so utterly deafening.
If Trump, as per their assertions, was meant to be so good for us as the UK, then this is the moment I want those positions and arguments defended. This is the point in time where I want Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson, Rees-Mogg and the numerous others who gaslit us all to be pulled into a BBC studio, be sat down with Emily Maitliss, Krishnan Guru-Murthy or Mehdi Hasan in front of cameras, and made to account5.
I want them each to explain how the tariffs, the threats, the territorial fantasies, the economic harm and the outright bullying delivered unto us as a country by the man whose bright orange ring they were polishing into a bright sheen is somehow good for us.
And yet, this will not happen.
There will, as with Brexit, be no revisiting of old claims. There will be no stock-take6. No “we got this wrong.” Just quiet shuffling on to the next subject of outrage and manipulation, the next skirmish in the ongoing culture wars that these men incubate. It will be as if these headlines were never written.
This is where the problem really lies for me. We treat, in the UK, this level of certainty as, at worst, a bit arrogant, and at best, a character virtue. We do so, and when accountability is due, there’s a shrug. There’s no follow up.
But that type of certainty without accountability is not confidence or even arrogance - it’s outright recklessness. It shapes public opinion, it influences policy and it reassures people into complacency at the exact moment when what they should be is cautious, sceptical and careful.
I have not written this piece as an exercise in scoring points or to relitigate arguments just for the sake of it. I’ve written it to be about memory.
This has been written as my own personal refusal to continue to let confident bullshit simply evaporate without consequences.
If you were loud enough to tell us that Trump would be the best thing to happen to Britain since Magna Carta, then you don’t get to disappear with a “no comment” or a “but geopolitics” or a “no one could have possibly known.”
No, no - you explain yourself, you admit you were wrong and that you never deserved our trust and certainty in the first place.
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And passing the piece on is also incredibly helpful.
Also translated into “people who noticed that shit may just hit the fan before I do.”
Admittedly, even if Johnson did know this at the time, I have a strong suspicion it wouldn’t have been a deal breaker.
Considering the past week or so, this prediction in particular has aged like milk. Left in the sun. During a heatwave.
In this case, history isn’t necessarily repeating itself, but it is audibly clearing its throat somewhere in the background.
And while they have them, I want some pointed questions asked about Brexit as well.
A hazardous exercise for certain members of the British press as it may reveal earlier positions that were a bit shit.
This is so important . Keep those receipts coming . They deflect , never take ownership and just bank on people forgetting , short term memory loss or will find someone else to blame .
The truth is it was them all along .
Three of the four commentators you refer to would make my personal 'Four Horsemen of Crap UK politicians' list: Johnson, Farage and Rees-Mogg. Liz Truss would be the other.
This love affair with the Tangerine Tyrant has become a cult. From the boot-licking Farage, to the scores of ICE agents with itchy trigger fingers, to the aggressive posturing toward allies and flagrant abuse of international law, we're watching the rise of the Nazis all over again, and now I understand how it was able to happen last time. People sleep-walked into disaster then, and we're doing it again now.