Trump persuades British Tories to betray their country The MAGA threat to national security

LOL ! This guy is so full of himself ! Believe me when I say I could jump on my high horse and denounce Donald Trump. Nothing would be easier than to go on (and on) about his racism and brutality, his corruption and misogyny. I could cry with polemical indignation about how he encourages insurrection, tells lies without end, and presents a clear threat to American democracy. Of course I could. I could do it in my sleep. Instead of moralising, however, I want to offer a factual proposition no fair-minded person can contradict. Donald Trump is a threat to European security. No patriotic European conservative – or patriot of any other political persuasion –can support his return to power Trump and his followers see NATO as a globalist plot by elite warmongers to suck America into paying for Europe’s defence, and their ideology is already having consequences. At Trump’s instigation Republicans in Congress are blocking US aid to Ukraine. At first, observers thought it was just a negotiating tactic. Republicans would get tougher controls on the US border with Mexico in return for agreeing to Biden's aid package. But Trump does not want a deal. Compromise would help Biden, which he has no intention of doing, and it would help Ukraine, and he won’t do that either. If Trump wins, the US deterrent will vanish. If Russia attacks, there will be no guarantees that the US will respond, and Russia will know that. The UK and the EU will face a full-scale military crisis. Conservatives, who say that national security is their first concern, simply cannot endorse Trump without making a nonsense of their lives. Yet a nonsense is what they are making. The worst Conservatives are now prepared to put love of radical right ideology before love of country. Boris Johnson is to the fore. He declared that “a Trump presidency could be just what the world needs”. And even I was faintly shocked by this treacherous performance. Many of us who opposed Johnson, thought that, say whatever else we liked about him, he had shown courage and principle in his willingness to defend Ukraine after the Russian invasion. Now he is prepared to abandon it. Johnson covers his betrayal by wailing that “I simply cannot believe that Trump will ditch the ­Ukrainians”. It’s a worthless caveat given that Trump has said he will ditch the Ukrainians, and his supporters in Congress are indeed ditching the Ukrainians at this very moment. At no point did Johnson discuss the consequences for NATO of a Trump victory. Or warn that the UK’s Conservative government may soon need to stop thinking about lowering taxes and start thinking about increasing defence spending. Share Instead, and tellingly, Johnsondelighted in the discomfort Trump provoked in the “global wokerati”. Like so many others, Johnson is prepared to throw away Ukraine’s security and to betray the security interests of his own country for the greater good of owning the libs. Reading through the work of the pro-Trump British Conservatives one learns that hatred of progressives is their alpha and omega. They would rather see the smile spread on Vladimir Putin’s face at the news of Trump’s r​eelection than concede an inch of ground to Western progressives. Lord (David) Frost, whom Johnson appointed to negotiate the UK’s disastrous departure from the EU, was explicit on this point. In a Telegraph opinion piece that read like a love letter, Frost began by confessing his loathing of rich American liberals, who apparently believe in forcing people to use less energy and eat less meat in the interests of restricting greenhouse gas emissions. Their environmentalism may seem a mild source of irritation but it was enough to send Frost careering to the far right. (And Trump is “far right” in the proper sense of the label because he threatens democracy.) Trump’s viciousness and his sadistic desire to humiliate all who cross him is alchemised in Frost’s mind into an endearing “brashness” and “indifference to convention”. Frost has no condemnation to make of the incitement to insurrection and all the other charges against Trump. On the evidence of his writing, His Lordship cares nothing for the fate of Europe should Trump win again. Instead, Frost displays the ghoulish admiration of the wimpy kid for the muscle-bound bully. He thrills to “Trump’s humour, [and] his one-liners, cheap though they are sometimes.” He confesses “I’d love to hear it if he were ever to come up with a nickname for Keir Starmer.” There you have it. Frost’s hatred of the left is so deep, nothing else matters. Not American or Ukrainian or British security. Nothing at all. As long as the playground bully can land his punches, the weaselly boy egging him on will clap his hands in delight. In the coming months the urge to go along with the right-wing gang will consume many British and European conservatives. In a rare moment of lucidity Frost spat out the reason why. Biden and Starmer are worse than anything the right and indeed far right can offer. Progressives may look moderate, Frost says. But, once in power, “you just might find they turn out to be a woke diversity obsessional, a believer in open borders, an open-the-spending-taps socialist”. Paranoid fear and irrational hatred justify abandoning the defence of your country. It was said of the worst of the French right in the 1930s that it would rather see Hitler invade than the left in power. Today the worst of the British right would rather see Putin’s forces advance on Kyiv than a Democrat in the White House. I cannot overemphasise how the seductions of extremism are luring at least some British Conservatives from their traditions. We could be about to witness a reversal of the pattern of the late 20th century. In the 1980s I along with many other leftists became a passionate supporter of unilateral nuclear disarmament. We thought we had good reasons – just as today’s Conservatives do. The Cold War was heating up. The United States and the Soviet Union were pouring medium-range weapons into Europe. It looked as if they were preparing for a “limited” nuclear war that would have reduced the continent to ashes. Although there were communists and Soviet agents in the anti-nuclear movement, most people had honest concerns. And yet our solution threatened the security of the country. The left of the 1980s proposed that the UK should remove all US bases and decommission its own nuclear weapons – while asking nothing of the Soviet Union in return. Writing from London is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Upgrade to paid To most people watching us, we seemed insane. The UK should disarm without getting concessions from Moscow? How did that ​work? We looked as if we were collaborating with Moscow, and that hint of treason killed the movement and the wider left. When Neil Kinnock led the Labour party in the 1980s, he spent years trying to persuade it to abandon unilateral disarmament. He knew that Margaret Thatcher could use many arguments to justify her cruel rule. And defence was always high among them. Labour would leave the country defenceless, Conservatives said. It would aid the UK’s enemies because it hated Western society more than it hated the Kremlin. Now in an irony​ of history it is the right who look like the leftists of the last century. Conservatives (or as I must keep reminding myself to say the worst Conservatives) hate progressivism as we hated Thatcherism and Reagani​sm. For them, as it was for us, it is better to endanger their country and please the Kremlin than make the smallest concession to their domestic opponents. If the right does not make a decisive break with Trump, it is at least possible to imagine that it will suffer the fate of the left of the 1980s. It certainly deserves to.​ Leave a comment Share Please consider taking out a paying subscription if you can afford to. You will have access to all articles, archives and podcast, and you will allow me to carry on writing! Best wishes, Nick Upgrade to paid Paying subsribers have hundreds of features to read. Recent examples include Arthur Miller, JK Rowling and the death of witch hunts NICK COHEN · AUGUST 24, 2023 Arthur Miller, JK Rowling and the death of witch hunts I love producing this newsletter, but it is a lot work! 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