Extremists such as Trump and Salmond flourish only when the voices of reason are suppressed
FERGUS Wilson wants to be Kent’s next Police and Crime Commissioner. This is not good news. Mr Wilson, an extremely wealthy former buy-to-let landlord with what newspapers tend to call ‘a colourful past’, could have been hand-knitted by Oswald Mosley.
‘From me you get Plain Talking and I tell it as it is!’ he yelps from one of his election leaflets. ‘Security at the Channel Tunnel is an absolute joke! An illegal immigrant walked through the Channel Tunnel! Can you believe it?’
If elected, he promises that ‘Heads will definitely Roll!’ and that there will be a ‘Call to Arms’ to create a vigilante – or, more likely, Dad’s Army – force made up of Kent residents. The county is on a ‘War Time Footing’.
Mr Wilson, a squat 65-year-old, is clearly a fan of direct action. In 2014, he was convicted of assault after entering the office of an estate agent with whom he was in dispute about a boiler, shouting ‘Right, you little s***’ and knocking the chap off his chair with a blow to the temple.
This brush with the law may have the fortunate consequence of barring him from his desired new career in crimefighting, thought one might argue his hair-raisingly freestyle approach to punctuation and capital letters is the greater offence.
Neddish
It’s one thing to be a semi-literate, neddish, extreme Right-wing bloviator when all you’re seeking is a limited say over the performance of Kent’s bobbies. It’s quite another when you’re pitching to be leader of the free world. For if Fergus Wilson resembles anyone, it’s a budget Donald Trump.
Trump is the current front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, with little indication that this is going to change. Again, this is not good news.
Consider what he has proposed so far: the deportation of 11 million illegal immigrants; the building of a giant wall along the US’s border with Mexico (for which the latter would be forced to pay); a ban on Muslims entering the States ‘until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on’; a refusal to accept any more Syrian refugees and the removal of those who have already made it to the US; a 45 per cent tariff on Chinese imports; the forcing of American companies that offshore their manufacturing – from Ford Motor Company to Oreo cookie manufacturer Nabisco – to return to home soil; sequestration of Iraq’s oil revenue to compensate for American military involvement.
This is a far from exhaustive list, but it would certainly exhaust a Trump administration in fairly short order. It is so unfeasibly radical, wrongheaded and outwith the bounds of political achievability that its author should have been laughed out of the arena by now and given a firm kick up the backside to help him on his way.
Instead, Trump shows little sign of falling victim to electoral gravity. Poll after poll has put him miles ahead of his Republican competitors – at the weekend, a survey by Reuters/Ipsos Mori gave him a 40.6 per cent share, higher than his next four challengers combined. Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, the most mainstream and traditional of the candidates, trail at the very back of the pack.
It may be that the early caucuses and primaries over the next few months restore some much-needed sanity to the situation. By the end of March the Trump bubble may have burst. Equally, it may not have. And it’s not just on the Republican side that things have gone screwy: the polls suggest Hillary Clinton has her work cut out winning the Democrat nomination over Bernie Sanders, who has positioned himself as a Left-wing radical speaking for the masses against the Washington elite.
We are living in the era of the überpopulist. Everywhere in the West, radicals and ‘outsiders’ are on the rise. Trump may be a globally famous billionaire TV personality, but he has positioned himself as a plain-talking, cut-the-crap type who will bust through politics-as-usual to get things done.
Worried about immigration? Simple: he’ll deport millions of illegals, build a wall to the South, ban Muslims and kick the Syrians out. Concerned by the diminishment of America’s global power? No problem: he’ll pursue an isolationist, America-first economic policy. Consequences? Don’t you worry your pretty little head about those.
It is inevitable that the über-populists’ soaring public appeal is having an impact on the centre. For instance, Sanders’ stiff challenge has forced Clinton to stop speaking out in favour of free trade and to instead criticise the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a deal to lower trade tariffs between 12 Pacific Rim countries that was negotiated by the administration she served as Secretary of State. The more mainstream Republican contenders are triangulating like crazy on immigration as they struggle to match Trump’s hardline positioning without destroying their own intellectual credibility.
It is of course necessary that sensible people denounce Trump and the dangerously unhinged politics he represents. Necessary, but not sufficient, because the reason he’s flying high is that lots and lots of people say they are willing to vote for him; and he is in fact just one facet of a modern crisis that won’t be disappearing any time soon.
When you look at Trump, you should also see Jeremy Corbyn and Nigel Farage and Alex Salmond. You should see France’s Marine Le Pen, Greece’s Alexis Tsipras and Spain’s Pablo Iglesias. You should see the Swedish Democrats, with their neo-Nazi ties, the Austrian Freedom Party, Germany’s Pegida and Hungary’s neofascist Jobbik Party.
Whether in the form of hard Left or hard Right or keenly populist or obsessively nationalist or some kind of combination, the extremes of politics are proving more attractive in the West than they have since the end of the Cold War, and arguably since the Second World War.
In Scotland, Alex Salmond could base his case for independence on a pack of lies and come close to pulling it off. Corbyn has captured the Labour Party for the hard Left with barely a peep from moderates. Le Pen is remaking the political map of France and looks likely to be a credible challenger for the presidency in 2017.
Fear
Though many of the above come from diametrically opposed political traditions, they adopt similar tactics in pursuit of their goal. They define themselves and their cause against an ‘other’. They pose as outsiders who can fix society’s most intractable problems by doing things differently – which they claim the mainstream elite (who are ‘all the same’) don’t dare to do due to complacency or fear or self-interest. These fixes usually involve disengaging from existing institutions in ways that they promise will not only be consequence-free, but will in fact hugely improve the lot of the population. And it is almost always a load of old nonsense.
It is made easier for them by the insistence of the moderate centre on its continued membership of the reality-based community, with all the compromises and deals and incremental improvements this entails. The mainstream doesn’t offer silver-bullet fixes because it understands that there are none. It chooses to be responsible, measured and inclusive, unlike, say, Donald Trump.
But moderates have got out of the habit of making the case for themselves and their way of doing things. They have become so trapped by tactical positioning and sloganising and the Great Game that they have spun away from voters.
This has been exposed by social media and exacerbated by the collapse of confidence in national institutions. The financial crash laid bare the scale of wealth inequality that has been created by modern capitalism. Globalisation and its supra-national organisations are seen as undemocratic and sinister. Where are the answers?
I suspect only suspicion and an innate conservatism has thus far saved us from the triumph of the extremists, but there’s no guarantee that will continue to be the case. Thoughtful democratic capitalists need to make a more muscular and honest argument for their philosophy and be seen to act on its failures. The alternative, I’m afraid, is President Trump.