January 21, 2025 - 1:00pm

We all live in America now. From based and redpilled Right-wingers to fully automated luxury communism-enjoyers, most politically engaged British people are drawn to the excitement and scope of US politics, the sense of a genuine ideological battle between two properly opposing worldviews. Inauguration Day in Washington DC yesterday provided plenty of opportunities to comment and prognosticate on the present and future of the USA.

Several big names on the British Right attended in person, including Suella Braverman, Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage. Braverman and Farage will likely have important roles to play in the reforging of British politics, and are doubtless seeking inspiration, good publicity on new Right media, and access to American networks. They have genuine ideological affinities with Trump 2.0. Johnson’s attendance, meanwhile, is a stark reminder of his total failure to take advantage of a decisive victory similar to Trump’s. His affiliation with the new president can be based on little more than personal vibes; in practical policy terms, he is more or less entirely opposed to the actions being taken by the new US administration concerning the border, energy, and the American equivalent of “the Blob”.

British preoccupation with US politics is a longstanding phenomenon, of course. Television and radio in the UK have long delivered incessant coverage of American elections. My generation spent a lot of imaginative time across the Atlantic, watching Saved By The Bell and The West Wing. Notoriously, in 2004, the Guardian encouraged its readers to contact voters in Clark County, Ohio, to persuade them to vote for John Kerry over George Bush. The county flipped from Democratic to Republican and has remained so ever since.

It’s not just Right-wingers like those mentioned above who are enamoured with America. The spread of the Black Lives Matter movement to Britain is the most obvious example of this mindset taking hold on the Left, with British campaigners adopting America-brained talking points about police brutality and racism that made very little sense in the context of the UK. Fads such as decolonisation, and a belief in “white supremacy” as a powerful force, were similarly copied wholesale from US discourse by provincial Britons desperate to keep up with fashions in the imperial centre.

But British conservatives who understandably wish to learn from the courage and vigour of their US counterparts will need to be careful. Polling suggests a considerable amount of scepticism about Trump and his allies among British people. Many are put off by the expensive bombast of American politics, and would dislike any attempt to reproduce it here. Impatient Right-wing reformers may be exasperated with the tradition of Tory pragmatism, but it has its place. Ours is an old country, with a long continuity and a precious inheritance. Much of the dysfunction in British institutions can be repaired; it is not necessary to simply abandon or destroy those institutions. The British Right also presently lacks the expertise and understanding required to impose its will on the various parts of the governing machine. Trump has access to a pool of talent that does not yet exist in this country.

However, it’s not hard to understand why both sides are drawn to the vitality of the American scene. Mainstream British politics, for now at least, is stuck in a wearisome holding pattern. Reform UK polling at 25% suggests possible dramatic change on the horizon, but nothing is certain. Prime Minister Keir Starmer is a kind of anti-Trump: doggedly Left-wing, dull, quietly fanatical, completely bound by the conventional wisdom of his class and training as a human rights lawyer. All the same, we should be careful in how much attention we devote to the exciting ructions across the pond. Britain’s problems are similar to America’s, but they are not identical. They will have to be solved in different ways by different people, via uniquely British mechanisms of state and social life.

The hope must be that we can gain inspiration and energy from Trump’s proclaimed “new golden age” for the USA. The Americans are rightly lauded for their optimism, practicality and self-belief; if we must attach ourselves psychologically and emotionally to the ups and downs of their politics, then let us adopt those qualities. Without them, there is little prospect of success for British reformers.


Niall Gooch is a public sector worker and occasional writer who lives in Kent.

niall_gooch