Sneer if you like, but our lot are just as bad as Trump and Hillary
SAy what you like about this unedifying American presidential campaign, but at least, unlike us, they’re holding an election to choose the next leader of their country. OK, so they’re having to decide between an inarticulate fairground barker, who never expected to be on the ticket in the first place and probably doesn’t want to win, and a borderline criminal and serial liar convinced the White house should be hers by divine right.
If Donald trump behaves in public like the boastful love-child of Piers Morgan and Philip Green, then ‘Crooked hillary’ is a cross between Cherie Blair and Rose West. For better or worse, one of these grotesques will become Leader of the Free World in three weeks’ time.
It’s easy to sneer at the demeaning state of affairs to which the greatest democracy on earth has been reduced. Indeed, I’ve done it myself. the default position of most British journalists covering the presidential campaign is to feign disgust, ridicule the whole rotten process and reassure themselves that back in Blighty we conduct our affairs in a far more sophisticated fashion.
But we’re kidding ourselves if we try to bask in our moral superiority over our brash American cousins. how can we seriously argue that the way we go about politics is any more legitimate than the system which produced the Donald and Lyin’ hillary?
Whichever one of them wins on November 8 will have endured an exhaustive and gruelling selection process, culminating in a nationwide plebiscite, in which more than 150million people are registered to vote.
trump is already preparing the ground for defeat — making noises about the election being rigged. the outraged headlines after Wednesday night’s final tV debate condemned his refusal to give a guarantee that he will accept the people’s verdict — sending the Clinton camp and their bovine cheerleaders in the mainstream media into a lather of selfrighteous indignation over this monstrous affront to democracy.
But we have, of course, been here before. In 2000, Democrat candidate Al Gore conceded defeat to George W. Bush, only to withdraw his concession a couple of hours later after receiving a phone call from the outgoing President — one William Jefferson Clinton — urging him to challenge the result.
ThAt one ended with legions of lawyers poring over disputed ballot papers in Florida and bizarre arguments involving ‘hanging chads’. But after a few weeks of haggling, the result stood and Bush was confirmed in office.
Even then, our smug political class looked down their noses at the Americans and insisted this kind of cynical, manipulative behaviour could never happen here.
Well, I’m sorry to puncture their self-regarding souffle of sanctimony, but we’ve got nothing to learn from the U.S. when it comes to subverting democracy.
In case you haven’t noticed, we’ve just changed our Government from top to tail without troubling the electorate. the political class used the outcome of the EU referendum to mount a palace coup. No one voted for theresa May to become Prime Minister and we now have a Cabinet comprised largely of ministers who were on the losing side of the argument.
the U.S. election has been dominated by allegations of sexual impropriety against trump and the financial chicanery which hangs off hillary like a cheap suit. Mrs Clinton was recently caught telling Wall Street bankers that what she says in public is not necessarily what she does in private. Sounds familiar? take Philip hammond, our new Chancellor, who now insists for public consumption that ‘Brexit means Brexit’. But by all accounts, behind closed doors he is doing his damndest to promise his friends in the City that he will ensure we stay locked in the sacred single market — subject to all EU rules, contributions and freedom of movement.
During the Brexit debate, an MP called Amber Rudd’s main contribution was to accuse Boris Johnson of being a sexual predator, as if that had anything to do with the Common Fisheries Policy. her reward, despite being on the losing side, was to be promoted to home Secretary.
Look Back In Amber’s brother, Roland Rudd, a PR spiv backed by the same kind of mega financial institutions which bankroll the Clintons, is running a guerilla campaign to overturn the referendum result.
Roland Rat’s partner in crime is our old friend Peter Aloysius Mandelson, one of the most odious men ever to infect the body politic, who has grown rich by sucking up to some of the world’s worst tyrants.
Mandelson, you recall, was twice required to resign from government for dishonesty.
HE WAS rewarded with a peerage and a lucrative sinecure in Brussels, which affords him a handsome pension linked to his undying loyalty. this gruesome twosome, along with a substantial number of failed and discredited politicians, think they can torpedo the will of the British people. What’s the difference between trump suggesting he might challenge the outcome of the presidential election and their attempt to reverse the referendum result?
hillary may be a proven and serial liar, but she’s no worse than Mandelson’s former boss tony Blair, who lied through his teeth in order to take Britain to war in Iraq — supported by a dodgy dossier compiled by his thuggish sidekick Alastair Campbell and a pliable security establishment.
In America, trump is under fire for minimising his federal tax liabilities and failing to publish his tax returns. But at least he’s made his own money.
have we forgotten how many of our own MPs resorted to sophistry and outright falsehood to claim parliamentary allowances and expenses to which they should not have been entitled and flipped the addresses of their ‘main’ homes to avoid paying capital gains tax? Some of them went to jail.
As for sexual mudslinging, the Americans have nothing to teach Labour’s tom Watson, the Nonce Finder General, who has routinely abused parliamentary privilege to falsely accuse his Conservative opponents of a catalogue of ‘historic’ sex crimes against children and other vulnerable individuals. he’s now his party’s deputy leader. So by all means poke fun at the U.S. election and feel free to mock the Donald and Crooked hillary.
But don’t forget the old saw about people who live in glass houses. Our political class has no right to feign superiority over the Americans, given their own track record of dishonesty and contempt for democracy.