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The Leave campaign is really the Donald Trump campaign with better hair

Donald Trump receives an honourary degree from Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen
Donald Trump receives an honourary degree from Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen Credit: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty

I spent Saturday evening in the Blue Note jazz club in New York, which tells you something about how deeply pleasant life can be when you have retired from government.

One brilliant young musician from Minneapolis noted, as he took to the stage, that he had just toured several dozen countries and found people in every one of them mystified by the course of American politics – “You mean Trump? The one with the Tower, and the TV show? That Trump? President?”

Most Americans do not travel abroad and are unaware that the rest of the world is watching their presidential election with degrees of concern ranging from bafflement to horror. But they can readily explain to the visitor the discontents and resentments that have allowed a billionaire reality-TV-show host with a very chequered reputation to come so close to being the most powerful man in the world. Immigration, lack of faith in established politicians, rapid change and competition in valued industries, and the feeling that the struggling middle-income family always loses out – the explanations soon pour forth.

With their own political convulsions explained, politically aware Americans then invariably ask “But what is going on in Britain?”, as if it were something different. Their bewilderment over our referendum has not been helped by the Eurovision Song Contest being broadcast in the States for the first time, revealing that Europe now includes Australia. Yet even allowing for this confusion, they do not quite see the reasons for our debates on the EU: “You’re not in the euro, right? Or that common visa area? So what’s with this leaving altogether idea?”

As we puzzle at each other from either side of the Atlantic, we are of course experiencing the same phenomenon. We are looking in a mirror and not recognising our own reflection. Even the campaign rhetoric is growing outlandish in parallel; Boris, citing Hitler at the weekend, was positively Trumpian as he made the calculatedly controversial remark and strove to look innocent afterwards.

More fundamentally, in both countries the Right is struggling to reconcile its cultural conservatism with its economic liberalism – openness to world markets means disruptive social change – and the moderate Left is in a state of philosophical collapse, leaving Hillary Clinton short of compelling reasons to win and Labour’s moderates with little influence in the debate on Europe. In both countries, so many people are sufficiently cross about their accumulation of grievances that they are prepared to vote against the established way of doing things without anything that could reasonably pass for a worked-out alternative programme. 

Donald Trump does not have the encumbrance of policies, with details attached, costs identified and implications analysed. He only has general statements, which he modifies or abandons as necessary: a recipe for an easy campaign and a catastrophic government. Similarly, the Leave campaign does not have an agreed alternative to put into action following a victory on June 23; the consequences will somehow be sorted out later. Any plan has been quickly abandoned when criticised: first we were going to be like Canada, then like Albania. Now we are just going to have “access to the single market”, which means: be like all the countries whose goods have to clear EU customs, have EU tariffs added to them, and are subjected to EU standards, without having any influence over what they might be. The Leave campaign is really the Trump campaign with better hair.

This transatlantic mirror-image is completed by the uncannily identical expectations, at least on the part of political pundits and financial markets, of what the results will be. These observers are not exactly having a good couple of years, and might be as wrong as they were about the British general election or the Republican nomination. But boil down all their forecasts and average them out, and you end up with a single-digit win for Clinton in November and for Remain in June. In both cases, the status quo is predicted to hang on by its fingertips.

It is, of course, too early to speak of either result with any confidence. There is, however, one conclusion we can draw before a single vote is cast: after polling day, politics will never be the same again in either country.

By this I do not mean that it will be difficult for the Cabinet to get on with each other after a divisive campaign. Never underestimate the ability of politicians to fall out with each other and then work together happily again when both self-interest and national interest require it and coincide.

Something much deeper than that will have changed permanently. Governments will have a greater sense of vulnerability, and political insurgencies a correspondingly stronger expectation of what they can achieve. A long-established consensus that free trade is good, technological change is to be welcomed, democracies are more stable and moderation is the key to electoral victories will have been severely challenged. The arguments for these assumptions will have to be articulated and fought for again, or else abandoned. The current way of doing things will have received its final warning.

The task of governing complex nations is, therefore, going to get even harder. The accelerating march of the information revolution, transforming one industry and service after another, cannot be stopped. It is not at all clear that the global movement of millions of people can be stopped. And the advance of Asian education, eroding the superior skills of Western nations, is beyond our control.

The only answer is to equip people to cope with the way the world is changing, rather than take refuge in telling them they can escape from it. Modern infrastructure, education that helps individuals to re-invent their careers several times, and the opportunity to save responsibly are all vital elements of persuading voters that their political systems can deliver. The average person in Iowa or in Dudley is going to need to feel that their leader understands the pressures they face and has a good plan for doing something about it.

Otherwise, as they are learning very rapidly, they are perfectly capable of demolishing the central assumptions of government, even when there isn’t a clear alternative. And they’re coming pretty close to doing that now.

 

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