Until November 5 this year, Donald Trump’s first presidential term looked like a populist blip amid decades of American liberalism. Since the US election, it looks like Biden was the liberal blip in a new era of populism.
Over here, we now wonder what that makes Sir Keir Starmer. Instead of the return to Westminster business as usual, perhaps he’s just the ad break before Nigel Farage’s even bigger populist wave breaks over Britain.
What American politicos call bed-wetting over the prospect has intensified since last week’s opinion poll put Reform above Labour for the first time. Yet Labour and the Tories forget they still have agency in this fight.
I’m just back from five months in America covering the presidential race. Here are five vital lessons that they should learn from Trump and his victory if they want to keep Reform out.
1. Be real
Whatever you think of Donald Trump, it was the real him on the campaign trail, from dad-dancing to YMCA to his barrage of crude insults, and yet again not doing any debate prep for the big TV showdowns. Not because he’s lazy, but because he knows how much today’s savvy voters hate pre-cooked lines.
At a rally in Wisconsin four days before polling day, Trump pretended to perform fellatio on his microphone. It’s what no silky-smooth politician would ever do — which is precisely his appeal in an anti-politics age.
Meanwhile, Harris’s four-year shape-shift from Left-wing Californian progressive to an anti-immigration gun fan just irritated voters ever more. Have we seen enough of Kemi Badenoch to know whether she has the authenticity to cut through? Has Keir ever had enough of it?
2. Read the mood of the nation
Battered by four years of sky-high inflation, America is not a happy place right now.
The opinion poll firm Harris (no relation) has been asking the famous Reagan question in every election since he posed it in 1980: are you better off than you were four years ago? This September, they recorded the largest number of respondents ever saying no, they’re not better off — 52 per cent.
Was joy ever the right emotion for the Harris campaign to sell to these people? Upholding the constitution mattered most to Team Kamala, while the Americans whose votes she most needed cared more about the price of eggs passing $4 (£3.15) a dozen. Trump, who has a very acute political nose, instead offered night after night of anger — “72 days of fury,” as he summed up his final sprint. What will the actual mood of Britain be in 2029, rather than the one politicians might like it to be?
3. The world is changing fast, don’t leave people behind
The new digital age and AI are speeding up the pace of change and ravaging the jobs market. No matter how alienated it makes many Americans feel, there’s little they can do to stop it. Where they can fight back is on cultural issues.
Democrats allowed their Left wing to take them way too far
Progressive causes may be admirable, but the Democrats allowed their Left wing to take them way too far, poisoning the whole well. A clip of Harris backing taxpayer-funded gender surgery for trans prisoners in 2020 was replayed by the Trump campaign again and again. Or as the Democrat strategist James Carville labelled another disastrous hobby horse: “ ‘Defund the police’ are the three most stupid words in the English language.”
Does the version of the country you might want to see excite voters more than it scares them?
4. Think big and be bold
Voters across the Western world aren’t stupid. They know the scale of the problems that mature democracies face: flatlining growth, fast ageing populations, mass migration. They also know none of them will be solved by tinkering with the status quo.
However unrealistic you think Trump’s election offer was (and some of it was really quite potty), it was undeniably bold. Giant tax cuts, re-homing industry with tariffs and taking on the Washington swamp.
Ming vase strategies don’t work against populists
Harris’s boldness? Her TV interview that polls showed voters remembered the most was her admission that she couldn’t think of a single thing she’d have done differently to the unliked Joe Biden. Will your election manifesto be bold enough? Ming vase strategies don’t work against populists, especially if you’re the incumbent.
5. Populism is never easy to deliver
This is an oft-forgotten lesson from Trump’s first term. His big, beautiful border wall was never completed, nor did Mexico ever pay for it and the illegal migrants kept coming. And he also lost in 2020.
Simple answers to ever-more complicated problems are very hard to make work. Trump seems to know that this time judging by the start of his row back on some signature promises. “It’s hard to bring things down once they’re up,” he noted last week on his pledge to lower grocery prices. Or his declaration that “the Middle East is an easier problem to handle than what’s happening with Russia and Ukraine”.
Broken promises may lead to disillusionment with his voters. We’ll know if they do earlier than the next UK general election because the next US presidential race ends before it. Having reached his two-term limit, Trump will no longer be in the White House, while the Democrats might have finally found their charismatic Bill Clinton of today to replace him.
How attractive will Farage-esque populism look to British voters then? It’s not time to bed- wet just yet.
Just how well in with the Trumps is Nigel Farage these days?
A story, told to me by a diplomat who witnessed it, is illuminating.
At a big dinner in the US recently, Farage was spotted at the edge of the hall “looking like the guy on prom night trying to pluck up the courage to ask a girl to dance”.
After some prevarication, the Reform leader steeled himself and made a B-line for the Trump family table in the middle of the room. The former president wasn’t there, but the next best thing was — his eldest child Don Jr, now his father’s closest adviser.
“Don, how are you? Lovely to see you!,” thundered Farage as he offered Don Jr a great bear hug.
Don Jr slowly rose and gingerly returned the embrace with a cool pat on Farage’s back while simultaneously mouthing to his table: “Who the f*** is this”?
Tom Newton Dunn is a political journalist, broadcaster and commentator
