A representative of the party whose members stormed Congress on January 6th is lecturing Europe about democracy? Who is part of an administration which according to the NYT is challenging the US federal constitution in ways not seen since the US civil war?
The events of the last few days can be summed up in three quick points. First, Trump isn’t just abandoning Europe - he’s attacking it. Second, his administration is ideologically aligned with Putin’s broader goal (think Munich 2007): weakening the Europe particularly the EU. And third, this is the first US administration openly hostile to the postwar European order. This America is not our friend or ally. Starmer should not waste time trying to act as a bridge to this administration. The so-called special relationship is dead. Instead, we need to work with our European friends and allies now.
I suppose we should view last week's Munich conference as a welcome and necessary step on our road to recovery.
A lot of very well intentioned, highly intelligent people have been unable to see the depth of Trump and Vance's commitment to ending democracy globally. Maybe the sledge hammer that landed on everyone's head last week will be sufficient.
Support a deterrent to the military threat from a revanchist Russia and an indifferent (at best) United States. "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."
Ukraine is an obvious asset for that effort. If your point is that Ukraine is doomed to be controlled by Putin that hypothetical changes nothing. Surrendering to that fate is counterproductive.
RU will not have to send troops to UK to menace you.
If you are OK with RU reforming the Soviet Union while you and your Euro allies continue to be relatively weaker then there is no deterrent you will accept as worthwhile. RU's economy and society has converted to a war footing. If you think you are safe as RU picks off small countries and grows in capability then sleep tight.
Agreed Putin is in no position to attack more countries today.
But the RUs have adapted through 3 years of warfare - better drones, much better missile targeting, electronic warfare. They've reoriented their economy towards arms production (which can't just be turned off BTW - ominous.) Russian society has been propagandized into an expansionist, resentful posture. RU has a battle-hardened nucleus and is positioned to be potent compared to individual or fragmented euro nations.
Donald Trump is bailing him out at the critical moment. He'll be ending sanctions and re-invigorating the RU economy. I accept that you and many others will never be convinced that europe is vulnerable. That is forever the case.
Striking that lecture by Vance defending free speech in Europe did not mention Orban, no?
How did they get here? Different personal routes. With Vance the hatred seems tactical - look at Vance’s journey from Hillbilly Elegy, but even so he seems to have convinced himself along the way. With Musk there is the trans kid plus commercial interest. With Trump the one completely genuine point in his character - his detestation of the NY elites who looked down on him.
Whatever the journey there, it js what it is once you arrive, and as for all tribal thinking the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Or so they think. Putin will take them to the cleaners. Moscow TV is barely bothering to hide its contempt. Remember Putin on Carson - just ‘an entertainer’. No need. They are too far gone to notice. There for the taking.
Unfortunately the UK political and media landscape is in no way currently able to think strategically about the post-American security landscape. KS's flight to DC looks desperate: his statement about 'acting as a bridge' shows just how obsolete SW1 (the parties, Whitehall and our old friends the Treasury) thinking is.
Combine this with a media dominated by the Lobby who see everything as a short term zero sum game and... we're just not ready for this.
In the UK we have a huge 5th column of influential, high profile media figures praising JD Vance’s speech in Munich and his agenda, including Allison Pearson, Daniel Hannan, Niall Ferguson and your fellow columnist at The Spectator, Douglas Murray.
I fear the pro-Putin faction in the UK will fatally weaken resistance to the forces of darkness.
I don't think it's even close yet: to turn this around would require burning a huge amount of political and economic capital. So many shibboleths need to go.
It's worth observing what happens inside the USA. I have no faith in the Dems other than firebrands like AOC, Cooper, Kim etc. But do not assume the country will fold. And do not assume that Musk will get a free ride from his shareholders. This is not a binary situation. They haven't - yet - won.
Spot on Nick. I have been saying to my Labour friends for a while now that the UK needs to seriously re-arm, but they didn’t really get it. I hope they will now. However it will take time to disentangle the Uk from US control and command structures and create something more self sufficient. Although Trump is not the US and his popular majority is small, your point about the left in the US is valid. It really is time to become independent of US resources and combine with European partners that genuinely share our values, recognising the rise of right wing populism there as well.
I found an easier way to think about what Trump is doing by changing the paradigm - Trumpism is not really political but basically religious in its psychology.
The devil is a mixture of liberalism and science causing an existential type of crisis in the faithful, which can only be solved by changing to a new dogma of redemption of the white race and destroying atheistic science in favour of personal salvation by faith in the new bible - Project 2025.
Vance and Hegseth are preachers and missionaries sent to the far off distant lands of the unfaithful to preach the new message and support their right wing ideologues who have been toiling in the wilderness.
The false god is science and the idolaters are the well educated who worship the god of information instead of the personal salvation of faith via the new bible and in the new redeemer (guess who?).
Washington is Babylon which must be destroyed and the new Jerusalem will be in Mar-A-Lago.
The Project 2025 requirements mimic Martin Luther's proclamation on the famous church door.
It is a political reformation of sorts which requires us to be ready for a religious/political period of strife as happened 4-5 centuries ago.
No it's a desperate pushback against the liberalism destroying America and the West.
It has much to do with Western values - which are all directly or indirectly Christian ones.
But nothing to do with race or whiteness - which is why many Hispanics and other people from ethnic minorities voted for Trump.
Science isn't of course on the side of atheism (rather the reverse, in fact) - hence Trump and Vance and their supporters aren't attacking science.
"Well-educated people" nowadays are those who have been most brainwashed into swallowing the fashionable liberalism and hatred of traditional religion, Christianity especially.
It’s long past time that news media stopped referring to the American President as ‘The Leader of the Free World’
In fact anyone who still uses that title for that office needs to be sent to cover television or sport and leave politics to the grown ups (though they wouldn’t survive in those fields as you actually have to attach names to quotes in those fields, whereas I read a thousand word ‘insider’ article about Tory divisions yesterday in the Guardian that didn’t include one quote attached to a name, even one quote that supported their leader and had a dig at Starmer was for reasons that explanation granted anonymity for their quote)
Makes perfect sense of the crazy days we’ve had. I believe Trump is giving the green light to China. He’s setting a table for three to serve up the planet.
The culture war(s) were started by liberals, who - now they're losing them - deplore culture wars !
There is, of course, no national interest transcending culture.
So until the USA can decide whether it wishes to be Christian - or continue sliding towards the grotesque and evil liberal-pagan religion it has largely embraced - it can have no agreed national interest. Still less a nation or national interest anyone will defend.
Obviously, religion and culture are vastly more important than mere nation or nations !
There are no longer any liberal democracies in Europe. Trump cannot attack or subvert them, any more than he can attack or subvert the Holy Roman Empire.
For liberal democracies to survive, liberals must be liberal, and the general public must be in a liberal frame of mind.
Those conditions applied from 1945 to about the millennium.
But liberals have failed to be liberal. They have turned liberalism from a centrist or social democratic political viewpoint (that takes care to see both sides of the argument) into a weird religious cult, with no real beliefs except personal autonomy and sexual diversity, leavened with a hypocritical "anti-racism."
The liberal cult is censorious and bigoted, given to tantrums when it is challenged and doom-laden hysteria when it is defeated.
Though calling populists corrupt, it's vastly more corrupt itself. Partly because its leaders (the Clintons, the Biden crime family) are very corrupt.
Partly because this liberalism really exists only to defend and advance the interests of the white-collar people (notably professionals, public sector types, media people) who uphold it.
In the process, the bunch of hypocrites described, with their passion for cheap labour and voters from abroad, have driven and are driving the public firmly to the Right.
The liberals having already destroyed Western Civ.
The "betrayal" of Ukraine - if such it was - occurred inpring 2022, when Biden and Western Europe decided not to take the gamble of fighting Russia.
We don't know what would have happened if that gamble had been taken.
Very probably, world war against Russia and China, possibly nuclear.
But Biden (unlike the hawks) was sane, so didn't take the gamble.
Can hopelessly indebted countries like the USA or Britain fight such wars now ? It is doubtful.
And there was no public support for war - as opposed to the waving of Ukrainian flags and slogans.
Ukraine showed desperate and heroic courage in resisting the "special military operation." But Russian incompetence was not so great as to allow Ukraine's counter-offensive in summer 2023 to succeed.
The result has been a blood-drenched stalemate, a meat grinder war.
Our hawks wish the bloodshed to continue. They hate Putin far too much, and are far too fanatical, to be humane or liberal. They shout for war - from a safe distance.
Trump - whatever his motives - is 100% correct, morally and realistically,
Trump and Musk aren't "building up"" far right forces in Britain and Germany.
They don't need to - liberals already have. Their programme of insanely high immigration, multculturalism and political correctness, has driven millions of moderate people to vote for Brexit, Reform, the AfD.
If liberals were liberals - not the lunatics and hyaterics they in fact are - they would have sought compromise on those issues.
Instead they have doubled-down, insulting opponents and blaming everyone for their predicament except the real culprits - themselves.
A representative of the party whose members stormed Congress on January 6th is lecturing Europe about democracy? Who is part of an administration which according to the NYT is challenging the US federal constitution in ways not seen since the US civil war?
The events of the last few days can be summed up in three quick points. First, Trump isn’t just abandoning Europe - he’s attacking it. Second, his administration is ideologically aligned with Putin’s broader goal (think Munich 2007): weakening the Europe particularly the EU. And third, this is the first US administration openly hostile to the postwar European order. This America is not our friend or ally. Starmer should not waste time trying to act as a bridge to this administration. The so-called special relationship is dead. Instead, we need to work with our European friends and allies now.
Who are in an even worse state than we are !
Meaning?
Europe should be seriously considering an alliance with China, as a more reliable ally than the US
I suppose we should view last week's Munich conference as a welcome and necessary step on our road to recovery.
A lot of very well intentioned, highly intelligent people have been unable to see the depth of Trump and Vance's commitment to ending democracy globally. Maybe the sledge hammer that landed on everyone's head last week will be sufficient.
So what are these wonderfully intelligent people going to DO about it?
Support a deterrent to the military threat from a revanchist Russia and an indifferent (at best) United States. "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."
Ukraine is an obvious asset for that effort. If your point is that Ukraine is doomed to be controlled by Putin that hypothetical changes nothing. Surrendering to that fate is counterproductive.
It's very doubtful that a threat to Ukraine is a threat to Western Europe. The Russian Army's poor performance in Ukraine proves that.
And as no one in the West wants war with Russia over Ukraine...
But what deterrent against Russia do you have in mind ?
RU will not have to send troops to UK to menace you.
If you are OK with RU reforming the Soviet Union while you and your Euro allies continue to be relatively weaker then there is no deterrent you will accept as worthwhile. RU's economy and society has converted to a war footing. If you think you are safe as RU picks off small countries and grows in capability then sleep tight.
Both Russia and Ukraine have killed off their own troops.
Putin has had to rely on Chechens and North Koreans.
He isn't as powerful as you seem to think him.
Agreed Putin is in no position to attack more countries today.
But the RUs have adapted through 3 years of warfare - better drones, much better missile targeting, electronic warfare. They've reoriented their economy towards arms production (which can't just be turned off BTW - ominous.) Russian society has been propagandized into an expansionist, resentful posture. RU has a battle-hardened nucleus and is positioned to be potent compared to individual or fragmented euro nations.
Donald Trump is bailing him out at the critical moment. He'll be ending sanctions and re-invigorating the RU economy. I accept that you and many others will never be convinced that europe is vulnerable. That is forever the case.
100%. Could not agree more.
Striking that lecture by Vance defending free speech in Europe did not mention Orban, no?
How did they get here? Different personal routes. With Vance the hatred seems tactical - look at Vance’s journey from Hillbilly Elegy, but even so he seems to have convinced himself along the way. With Musk there is the trans kid plus commercial interest. With Trump the one completely genuine point in his character - his detestation of the NY elites who looked down on him.
Whatever the journey there, it js what it is once you arrive, and as for all tribal thinking the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Or so they think. Putin will take them to the cleaners. Moscow TV is barely bothering to hide its contempt. Remember Putin on Carson - just ‘an entertainer’. No need. They are too far gone to notice. There for the taking.
Presumably Vance sees his surest route to becoming 48 is by out-Trumping Trump.
No - Vance's detestation for the liberals who have destroyed working-class America is very sincere.
How is Putin going to "take them to the cleaners" ?
He is as impotent against them as are Western liberals.
Why would Putin act against them when hey are enacting Russian foreign policy?
They are enacting American foreign policy. You dislike it, so you call it "Russian foreign policy."
It isn't. But it is rational, unlike your daft (and failed) pretence of support for Ukraine
Unfortunately the UK political and media landscape is in no way currently able to think strategically about the post-American security landscape. KS's flight to DC looks desperate: his statement about 'acting as a bridge' shows just how obsolete SW1 (the parties, Whitehall and our old friends the Treasury) thinking is.
Combine this with a media dominated by the Lobby who see everything as a short term zero sum game and... we're just not ready for this.
We've never been so exposed.
Oh I agree. I just wonder whether the crisis is so grave that the establishment will have to change course
Nick,
In the UK we have a huge 5th column of influential, high profile media figures praising JD Vance’s speech in Munich and his agenda, including Allison Pearson, Daniel Hannan, Niall Ferguson and your fellow columnist at The Spectator, Douglas Murray.
I fear the pro-Putin faction in the UK will fatally weaken resistance to the forces of darkness.
David
I don't think it's even close yet: to turn this around would require burning a huge amount of political and economic capital. So many shibboleths need to go.
It would also require a huge amount of Money that Bankrupt Britain hasn't got and has no means of getting.
Since Europe is swiftly heading to become Eurabia or to the Dark Ages, a change of tack isn't politically doable either.
Nonsense that Europe is soon or ever going to be an Islamic state. Pure bigoted nonsense.
Pure wishful thinking on your part to contradict me.
The birth rate and migration are making us Eurabia,
Or do you imagine those things aren't important ?
Doubtful.
It appears the leaders of Europe probably are now realising, albeit slowly, it’s make your mind up time.
If they had any minds, they wouldn't have destroyed their own countries in the pursuit of a liberal, internationalist phantasm.
They are in any case, too impotent to have any power against Trump.
And if they launch some spiteful, yet feeble rally against him, they will be the losers.
Their Age is Over. And Trumpian populism no longer depends on Trump.
In the Age of Emergencies we're now entering, Bye Bye liberalism.
It's worth observing what happens inside the USA. I have no faith in the Dems other than firebrands like AOC, Cooper, Kim etc. But do not assume the country will fold. And do not assume that Musk will get a free ride from his shareholders. This is not a binary situation. They haven't - yet - won.
Spot on Nick. I have been saying to my Labour friends for a while now that the UK needs to seriously re-arm, but they didn’t really get it. I hope they will now. However it will take time to disentangle the Uk from US control and command structures and create something more self sufficient. Although Trump is not the US and his popular majority is small, your point about the left in the US is valid. It really is time to become independent of US resources and combine with European partners that genuinely share our values, recognising the rise of right wing populism there as well.
I found an easier way to think about what Trump is doing by changing the paradigm - Trumpism is not really political but basically religious in its psychology.
The devil is a mixture of liberalism and science causing an existential type of crisis in the faithful, which can only be solved by changing to a new dogma of redemption of the white race and destroying atheistic science in favour of personal salvation by faith in the new bible - Project 2025.
Vance and Hegseth are preachers and missionaries sent to the far off distant lands of the unfaithful to preach the new message and support their right wing ideologues who have been toiling in the wilderness.
The false god is science and the idolaters are the well educated who worship the god of information instead of the personal salvation of faith via the new bible and in the new redeemer (guess who?).
Washington is Babylon which must be destroyed and the new Jerusalem will be in Mar-A-Lago.
The Project 2025 requirements mimic Martin Luther's proclamation on the famous church door.
It is a political reformation of sorts which requires us to be ready for a religious/political period of strife as happened 4-5 centuries ago.
No it's a desperate pushback against the liberalism destroying America and the West.
It has much to do with Western values - which are all directly or indirectly Christian ones.
But nothing to do with race or whiteness - which is why many Hispanics and other people from ethnic minorities voted for Trump.
Science isn't of course on the side of atheism (rather the reverse, in fact) - hence Trump and Vance and their supporters aren't attacking science.
"Well-educated people" nowadays are those who have been most brainwashed into swallowing the fashionable liberalism and hatred of traditional religion, Christianity especially.
It’s long past time that news media stopped referring to the American President as ‘The Leader of the Free World’
In fact anyone who still uses that title for that office needs to be sent to cover television or sport and leave politics to the grown ups (though they wouldn’t survive in those fields as you actually have to attach names to quotes in those fields, whereas I read a thousand word ‘insider’ article about Tory divisions yesterday in the Guardian that didn’t include one quote attached to a name, even one quote that supported their leader and had a dig at Starmer was for reasons that explanation granted anonymity for their quote)
Makes perfect sense of the crazy days we’ve had. I believe Trump is giving the green light to China. He’s setting a table for three to serve up the planet.
The culture war(s) were started by liberals, who - now they're losing them - deplore culture wars !
There is, of course, no national interest transcending culture.
So until the USA can decide whether it wishes to be Christian - or continue sliding towards the grotesque and evil liberal-pagan religion it has largely embraced - it can have no agreed national interest. Still less a nation or national interest anyone will defend.
Obviously, religion and culture are vastly more important than mere nation or nations !
As liberals have been at such pains to remind us.
There are no longer any liberal democracies in Europe. Trump cannot attack or subvert them, any more than he can attack or subvert the Holy Roman Empire.
For liberal democracies to survive, liberals must be liberal, and the general public must be in a liberal frame of mind.
Those conditions applied from 1945 to about the millennium.
But liberals have failed to be liberal. They have turned liberalism from a centrist or social democratic political viewpoint (that takes care to see both sides of the argument) into a weird religious cult, with no real beliefs except personal autonomy and sexual diversity, leavened with a hypocritical "anti-racism."
The liberal cult is censorious and bigoted, given to tantrums when it is challenged and doom-laden hysteria when it is defeated.
Though calling populists corrupt, it's vastly more corrupt itself. Partly because its leaders (the Clintons, the Biden crime family) are very corrupt.
Partly because this liberalism really exists only to defend and advance the interests of the white-collar people (notably professionals, public sector types, media people) who uphold it.
In the process, the bunch of hypocrites described, with their passion for cheap labour and voters from abroad, have driven and are driving the public firmly to the Right.
The liberals having already destroyed Western Civ.
The "betrayal" of Ukraine - if such it was - occurred inpring 2022, when Biden and Western Europe decided not to take the gamble of fighting Russia.
We don't know what would have happened if that gamble had been taken.
Very probably, world war against Russia and China, possibly nuclear.
But Biden (unlike the hawks) was sane, so didn't take the gamble.
Can hopelessly indebted countries like the USA or Britain fight such wars now ? It is doubtful.
And there was no public support for war - as opposed to the waving of Ukrainian flags and slogans.
Ukraine showed desperate and heroic courage in resisting the "special military operation." But Russian incompetence was not so great as to allow Ukraine's counter-offensive in summer 2023 to succeed.
The result has been a blood-drenched stalemate, a meat grinder war.
Our hawks wish the bloodshed to continue. They hate Putin far too much, and are far too fanatical, to be humane or liberal. They shout for war - from a safe distance.
Trump - whatever his motives - is 100% correct, morally and realistically,
in trying to stop it.
We now await events.
Trump and Musk aren't "building up"" far right forces in Britain and Germany.
They don't need to - liberals already have. Their programme of insanely high immigration, multculturalism and political correctness, has driven millions of moderate people to vote for Brexit, Reform, the AfD.
If liberals were liberals - not the lunatics and hyaterics they in fact are - they would have sought compromise on those issues.
Instead they have doubled-down, insulting opponents and blaming everyone for their predicament except the real culprits - themselves.