Donald Trump’s British apologists like to say that he is a disrupter who just throws things up in the air. What they didn’t foresee is that his outbursts would drop like a bomb on their ambitions to win power by emulating Trump and sucking up to the new US administration.
Those on the right of British politics have been thrown into disarray by Trump’s vicious and fallacious attacks on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenksy and by his willingness to hold friendly talks with Russia while excluding Ukraine and Nato allies.
On the third anniversary this weekend of Russia’s all-out assault on Ukraine, the Trump administration is opposing the use of words “Russian aggression” in a statement by G7 allies. And Trump and his unelected sidekick Elon Musk have taken to calling President Zelensky a “dictator”.
These opinions are massively out of step with the truth and a direct contradiction of what the British public thinks – and can see with its own eyes.
Only three per cent of the UK public thinks that the war is Ukraine’s fault, according to a new YouGov survey. Nearly 80 per cent want Ukraine to win the conflict. Populist politicians cannot afford to stray too far from public opinion on such a vital issue as national security.
This could yet be an existential crisis for Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party and Kemi Badenoch’s leadership of the Conservative Party. If Trump’s America really wants to opt out of the post-Second World War rules-based order, in favour of big power politics and dumping its traditional allies, Farage and Badenoch certainly do not want to talk about it.
Sir Keir Starmer had no trouble reading the room following Trump’s outbursts. Unwilling to insult the US President directly ahead of their visit to the White House next week, the Labour Government has resorted to passive aggression. Ministers have stated repeatedly on the record that Zelensky is not a dictator and that it is democratically legitimate for Ukraine to delay elections, as Britain did, when in a state of war.
The Liberal Democrats get it too – though like Labour they are likely to find out that 2.5 per cent of GDP defence spending by 2030 will not be sufficient. A host of Tories have spoken out as well.
Those British politicians openly flirting with Trumpism did not know which way to turn. Boris Johnson opined last week that Trump would never turn his back on Ukraine. When the President did just that, Johnson wittered that the President did not really mean it. Grudgingly and belatedly, Farage and Badenoch muttered that Zelensky was not a dictator before gratefully twisting away to take up other Trumpian themes.
The leaders of Reform UK and the Conservatives chose to spend the parliamentary recess at events staged by North American Trump fans. Both spoke in London at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC), organised by the Canadian influencer Jordan Peterson. Next Farage joined Liz Truss and US Vice President JD Vance outside Washington DC celebrating Trump’s victory at the annual rally by the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC).
Farage is wilier than his fellow Reform UK MPs. Unlike Richard Tice, he did not end up in a confrontation with TalkRadio’s Julia Hartley-Brewer over which parts of the UK he would be prepared to hand over if Russia invaded. And unlike the multi-millionaire Rupert Lowe, he did not accuse Starmer of “warmongering” for suggesting British troops could be part of peacekeeping forces in Ukraine – a measure which 58 per cent of the British would support, according to YouGov.
But he did agree that there should be a timeline towards an election in war-torn Ukraine and hailed Trump as the “bravest man” that he knows, before prematurely thanking his American friends for the help they would give him on his way to certain victory at the next British general election.
At the ARC, Badenoch warned that Western civilisation will be lost unless she can lead the Conservative Party back to power. She mentioned Russia in passing in a list of “totalitarian states”, but for all her talk of the West’s moral crisis, her speech avoided mention of the vital issue of the moment, highlighted by Trump’s intervention. Russia’s bloody war to reverse the westernisation of Ukraine must surely rank as the clear and present danger to the West.
Instead, Badenoch echoed Vance’s gaslighting speech at the Munich security conference by castigating the BBC and universities, some of the UK’s globally admired institutions, along with Black Lives Matter: all part, she suggested, of “the real poison of left-wing progressivism, whether it’s pronouns or DEI or climate activism”.
Badenoch’s splashing around in the shallows of US culture wars will not distract for long from the Conservative Party’s culpability for the state of the national economy. Ominously for her, rival Robert Jenrick is staying out of that tainted water.
Trump is not Ukraine’s friend. And in the long run, he will not prove to be a friend of either Badenoch’s or Farage’s ambitions either.
Adam Boulton presents Sunday Morning on Times Radio
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