The problem with the hot-take culture of social media is that speculative ruminations, which may turn out to be wrong, are often disincentivised. The algorithm prefers that you pick a hill to die on or a hill to charge, not to stay put and ponder. Yet, I can’t help but conclude that if I were a British leftist of the LBC and Guardian stripe, I’d be absolutely convinced that the current American administration is attempting a “regime change” in the United Kingdom.
The problem with such speculation, of course, is that the Labour Government is so incompetent that it is difficult to assess where the stupidity ends and the external sabotage begins. To list examples of where the Trump administration could be undermining Starmer’s regime is simultaneously to list examples of policies so venal and at odds with “Western values” that they amount to an open goal.
This year, there’s been a steady background noise in Britain of “civil war” brought about by the sheer scale of mass immigration, crimes against native women, censorship, two-tier policing, and all the rest. Yet, I’m not the first to notice that the civil war narrative was propagated from a network of podcasts with a distinctly pro-MAGA, pro-Zionist slant. However, we must tread with caution. I actually agree that we’re in danger of lurching toward sectarian conflict, in England in particular. Nevertheless, the British deep-state, Neocon outlet The Daily Telegraph has repeatedly published articles citing an impending civil war, not ethnic-conflict or possible sectarian tensions.
The atmosphere in which Keir Starmer has to operate is one of a perpetual looming crisis brought about by his own policies (rather than the Boriswave) that could spell doom for the country. The beneficiaries of this narrative are not actually the British right, who have no means to conduct any conflict, but large-scale podcasters who generate traffic, and the Trump administration, which can feel vindicated in its own ideals. The MAGA base can use the UK as a cautionary lesson.
Naturally, this leans into the traditional Counter-Jihad framing of the American and British right being pro-Israel and anti-Islam in a conflict of “values” that always align with Neoconservative ideals.
The introduction of Islam here is vital because the MAGA impression of Britain, and most certainly of the Labour Party, is that we’re effectively a caliphate operating under shariah law. Again, this is not to understate the actual problems we have, but to point out that others have noticed them too and might logically seek to use them to their advantage. The Labour Party is indeed heavily reliant on the Muslim vote, and that means they’re hamstrung when it comes to issues such as the Israel/Palestine situation. The party leadership is forever in a state of tension with its base, whether Islamic or just leftist, as to the degree and nature of their support for Israel and pro-Zionist narratives.
From the perspective of the Trump administration and its backers, the Labour Party must seem like a profoundly weak and compromised ally when it comes to the Middle East.
When discussing the British Government in this context, it is not so much the old debate between malice and incompetence, but sabotage or stupidity.
Added to the civil war narrative, and neatly complementing it, is the truly appalling state of free speech in the UK. This too has been picked up on by the Trump administration, particularly JD Vance, and Starmer was thrown a curveball in Trump’s presence by being asked directly if he thought free speech was under threat by himself. While I welcomed these interventions, I couldn’t help but notice that Starmer’s political capital was publicly damaged as a result because he had to awkwardly lie that our free expression was as robust as it always had been.
Once again, the idea being seeded was that the UK is a totalitarian basket case and Keir Starmer was responsible, despite the draconian laws cited being in place long before his tenure.
Like the civil war narrative, the populist podcast and right-leaning media scene is correctly placing Lucy Connolly’s outrageous imprisonment around Starmer’s neck like an anvil. This is, naturally, to be expected, as it is an ideological slam dunk. There are views and clicks in it, and there is also a genuine case of a woman having been locked up while allies and friends of Labour run free.
Yet, it is now being reported that Lucy Connolly is set to travel to the US to give testimony before Congress, and likely accompanied by Nigel Farage. The New Statesman seems to have cottoned on to the play:
The case has since become a right-wing cause célèbre on both sides of the Atlantic. Her release this week is being closely watched in Washington. “There’s great interest in Lucy’s case among the admin. It illustrates the harms JD Vance warned about in Munich,” one Washington insider close to the administration told me. Nigel Farage has said about the case that his “American friends cannot believe what is happening in the UK”.
Nigel’s friends in Washington could have highlighted the Palestine Action story that has seen hundreds arrested for wearing T-shirts and an insane overreach of the UK’s anti-terror legislation, but they didn’t. Indeed, Trump’s America is quite comfortable censoring in the name of combating antisemitism. And why is Nigel Farage touted as Lucy Connolly’s chaperone and not, for example, free speech guru Toby Young?
The purpose of the Trump administration galloping to defend free speech in the UK is not really about free speech, but about undermining the Labour Government, which is fair enough. However, we now see Nigel Farage entering the fray as our champion. Farage and his party, Reform UK, have been the primary beneficiaries of all of the narratives above and Labour’s staggering incompetence. With Nigel Farage as Prime Minister, MAGA and Trump would have an ardent ally and fellow traveller in Number 10 Downing Street, unencumbered by an Islamic bloc vote, shorn of the Euro technocrat circle that Starmer prefers, and a compliant client on matters such as Russia and Ukraine.
Moreover, internally, Reform can act as the off-ramp from two-tier policing and the illegal immigrant crisis and become a theoretical balm for the nation’s many wounds.
What’s standing in the way of all of this is that Starmer still has years left before he has to call an election. Unless, of course, some disaster collapses the Government. Perhaps a disaster on the scale of the British economy finally going belly up, and the country requiring the IMF to intervene and manage our affairs. Which is precisely what the Daily Telegraph reported this week.
It is difficult to refute that the stage is being set for Nigel Farage, and that forces higher even than Labour’s incompetence are helping to write the script.
This post is somewhat speculative and more hashing out some thoughts I've been having of late. I could be wrong, it is a gut feeling.
Hm, perhaps. I can't help but feel that whoever happened to be in power during this term of office was going to face much of the same ill-placed contempt from the Americans.
Trump is the free speech guy, the anti-illegals guy, the low tax pro-business guy who cuts government debt and balances the books. Sure, he deports people for criticising Israel, uses decade-old figures for the numbers of illegals in the US, and the mainline federal tax rate hasn't really changed since Reagan, but this is his shtick and the part he is to play in front of the cameras. It's an unfortunate truth for whoever ended up happening to currently be 'running' Britain that these ostensible values of the Trump regime and the degrees of freedom left to the British government at this point are fundamentally at odds.
Perhaps Reform would see better treatment from a Trump regime, but would that be the case if Reform had to enact all the same policies as Labour in the relevant culture war areas? Namely, if Reform were in power last year during the riots, does anyone seriously believe they'd have handled e.g. the case of Lucy Connolly significantly differently? Had they handled her case much the same way, would the Trump admin have treated them any differently to Labour for doing so?
The problems in the UK are systemic at this point, not party political. The fact is that the past century (at least) of British policy has been an unmitigated disaster and now we're trapped in the fumes. Any government that takes power is going to have to deal with the agitation between the natives and the legions of foreigners that historical governments have imported, and no government that actually rules could do anything other than stamp down hard on natives when they start showing signs of racial consciousness. This is evil, sure, and won't draw kind looks from a US administration that's LARPing as a nativist party, but it's also simply the obvious calculus of power: irrespective of what parties say out of power, they're obliged by events to crack down on anything that looks like the first signs of a brewing rebellion.
I guess the point I'm meandering towards here is that I think the Trump admin's treatment of the Labour party is really just a function of where we are as a country and what the Trump admin is LARPing as. I think we'd be in a similar position with any party in power, given the same set of events on the ground, but I could be being naive.