It must do strange things to someone for their name to detach from their person and take on a meaning of its own. George Orwell didn’t live long enough to see his name become an adjective; Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher did, and look what happened.
Worse than becoming an adjective, though, must surely be becoming a noun, and for that noun to eclipse them entirely. It’s possible, now, to use the word “quisling” without ever suspecting it wasn’t always a generic term for a traitor and collaborator. But it referred to a Norwegian politician, Vidkun Quisling, whose choices during the Second World War you will be able to guess. Despite having been executed before 1945 was out, for leading his country’s government during the Nazi occupation, Quisling could have witnessed what his name would become, all the same: as early as 1940, the Times ran a leader column headlined “Quislings everywhere”.
The UK is not, of course, occupied territory. But – after the tariffs, and the threats to Greenland, and the attacks on European liberal democracy, and the lawsuit against the BBC – it is hard to argue that the Trump administration is not, at this stage, a hostile foreign power. Neither Trump (YouGov net approval rating: -56 per cent) nor his war (-21 per cent) are popular in Britain. That should not surprise us: even if the war is short (we’ll see), it will do horrible things to energy markets and provide yet another shock to the British economy and household budgets, and quite frankly, we’ve all had enough of those in the past couple of decades. It’s at least possible that limiting Britain’s involvement could be the first actually popular thing Starmer’s done all year.
All of which raises a question. Why are so many prominent British right-wingers – conservative does not seem quite the word – determined to take Trump’s side over ours?
Last week, long-standing defenders of UK independence and sovereignty such as Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage furiously argued that doing anything other than letting the US president dictate British foreign policy amounts to unforgiveable weakness. Neither public opposition to the conflict, nor that it is still unclear what the American war aims actually are, seem to have factored in their thinking. The same can be said of Tony Blair’s decision that this is the moment to break with his successor, by telling Starmer he should have backed Trump’s war. Full marks for consistency, I suppose, but nil points for learning even the most clunkingly obvious lesson from his own history.
If these guys don’t have the voters on their side, though, they do at least have the press. The Telegraph’s Allison Pearson wrote a column enthusiastically agreeing with Trump’s claims that Starmer is “no Winston Churchill”. (Well, no.) Piers Morgan noted that Trump’s comment was “brutal”, without feeling moved to comment on the credibility of its source.
The Sun’s Harry Cole, meanwhile, has been gleefully trumpeting his interview with the president in which he “slams” or “blasts” Starmer (verb choice varies) for his refusal to join the bombing. It suggests Trump accused the PM of “pandering to Muslim voters”; on examination of the actual text, however, it turns out that the accusation was the Sun’s, and all Trump said was “it could be”. This is certainly an entrepreneurial approach to journalism. That it is in the public interest, I’m not so sure.
It is not that one expects these guys to actually like Keir Starmer: few of those who actually voted for him do, at this stage, so it’s a little much to expect approval from the other side. Nonetheless – when did denizens of the British right convince themselves that backing a foreign leader over their own countrymen was in any way patriotic? How does “doing whatever the White House dictates” mesh with that long-standing promise to take back control?
One possibility is that they spend too much time on what we used to call Twitter, on which the algorithm and the potential of virality makes pro-Trump takes look much more popular than they actually are. Another is simple financial incentives: put bluntly, if you really want to make it on the right-wing comment circuit, you need to break America, and you’re not going to do that by criticising Trump.
Or maybe it’s simple muscle memory. If you are on the right, you attack Labour and go where the American right goes and you don’t stop for a moment to think about it. Culture wars can wreak chaos, too.
Donald Trump is not occupying our territory, but our minds may be a different matter. He and his country have power over us, through everything from defence partnerships to the global financial or tech architecture, and have made clear they are not afraid to use it. Donald Trump is not on the side of the British people – yet the British right line up loyally behind him, nonetheless.
These people are not, at this stage, quislings. But perhaps they should rethink – before one of them ends up as a word.
[Further reading: Oil prices mean Starmer must raise tax or face recession]
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Subscribe here to commentI think this war in Iran has given me a great sense of clarity in that something deeply dark and troubling is happening with our right-wing press/establishment. I am genuinely quite concerned.