We must understand why many Americans will vote for Trump
As with Ukip and Brexit, the Republican appeals to those ordinary people who have seen living standards plummet
reflected the English average. Sevenoaks is not known for its lack of opportunities, or its levels of deprivation.
Brexit is not just about economics. It is also about culture and a sense of national identity. In this way, it does share a loose affinity with that is going on in America. Brexit voters across Britain did not share the urban-elite views of their political masters.
A friend of mine, a successful City lawyer, expressed total incredulity at the thought that anyone could vote for Brexit. “They’ve got to be mad,” he complained. Life had been good to him. For 10 years he had worked in the City, earning huge amounts of money with which he can pay his Slovakian nanny. As far as he was concerned, his own merits had secured the enviable lifestyle he enjoyed. He remains, to this day, blithely unconcerned about the wider national picture.
Trump instinctively understands the lack of connection between the governing classes and an industrial worker in, say, Ohio. Industrial workers in large parts of America are frightened that illegal immigrants will undercut their wages. They are also worried about their industrial plant moving to Guangdong province, China.
Trump also appeals to a section of the population with whom I’m familiar in Britain. These people feel that politicians never get anything done and are too often apologetic about their country. “Make America Great Again” is a powerful slogan. It implies that America was great but has stopped being so. The implicit assumption is that a strong man, perhaps even a messianic figure, will restore that greatness and lead the struggling people of America to a promised land.
British politics, one hopes, is more sophisticated than this. Nigel Farage was never really taken seriously as a messiah. His beery image, complete with cigarette and blazer, did not quite have the same air of pompous megalomania as “the Donald”. Trump’s grotesque behaviour, his obscene language and histrionics may condemn him to defeat in November. The ideas he represents, however, are likely to survive.
In Europe there is growing acknowledgement that the times are out of joint. In Britain, our Prime Minister speaks of “a country that works for everyone”. Even the high priestess of globalisation, Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund, has spoken of a “softer, kinder IMF” to address public anger.
For Trump and his supporters in America, these may just be pious words. But it is clear that politicians in Europe and the United States will actually have to deliver real policies to prevent populist discontent growing to dangerous levels.
People in an exaggerated way have sometimes compared the world today to the 1930s, which WH Auden famously described as a “low, dishonest decade”. In the same verse, he writes, “waves of anger and fear circulate over the bright / And darkened lands of the earth”. This is what today’s politicians are fighting against.
Kwasi Kwarteng is the Conservative MP for Spelthorne