Could it happen here? Why does that seem to be a subject of even more interest than the urgent issue of how much the Trump presidency will affect our national prospects? Because it is a fascinating and profound question.
Whatever the consequences of Trump’s policies on trade or war turn out to be, they are practical matters which will be dealt with in concrete terms. But the really big thing – the ultimate challenge of our time for anyone interested in the governing of free societies – is whether the mass popular uprising that Trump’s victory embodies is a pattern for other Western countries, or a peculiarly American event. In fact it is both, but the differences between the two are critically important.
First, the sense in which Trumpism can be translatable into British or European terms. That is pretty obvious and was instantly noted by commentators who can justifiably claim to have seen this reckoning coming for a long time.
That overworked epithet “liberal elites” has never been so totally vindicated. The contempt with which the resentments and fears of ordinary people have been dismissed, not merely as inconsequential but as positively evil, was a crime against democracy.
Not only did those infamous, self-regarding elites reject the anxieties of whole swathes of the population but, most specifically, they scorned the very people that the Left was designed to speak for: the struggling working classes who do not have the advantages of higher education and the social confidence it provides.
There is something distinctly decadent about this political fashion: something almost perverse in its interpretation of the word “tolerance” which has been stretched to mean, not forbearance, but the elevation of minorities to be super-protected, specially favoured categories who must be given preference over those born into “privilege” however absurdly that word is construed.
Much of this was familiar snobbery, of course: a fresh excuse for dismissing (in Britain) working class yobs and (in America), redneck oiks. Somehow even these groups of clearly disadvantaged people came to be classified as “privileged” but that was a contradiction which nobody bothered to get to grips with.
When Trump stole Franklin Roosevelt’s phrase “the forgotten man” for his early campaigns, this is what he was trying to evoke. So yes, that is something that the British scene apparently has in common with the circumstances that produced the Trump victory. Even the terms in which those American voters described their decision to vote for a man they often claimed to dislike, spoke of the anger with which they condemned the mainstream establishment for its abandonment of them.
In the UK, and indeed much of Europe, this has a special resonance. It is the parties of the Left that have enthusiastically embraced this elitist cult which denigrates the very classes of society which they were created to represent. That acknowledgement of a class system – and the historic guilt of an entitled bourgeoisie – still runs through European and British politics. The debt that is owed to those who had nothing but their own labour to live by, and the responsibility owed to them from everyone who is initiated into the advantages of middle class life by family or education, is still embedded in the political conscience.
Now, quite suddenly that whole moral edifice has collapsed. Working people, whatever their hardships, are accused of casual bigotry as well as global selfishness. When Labour politicians tell them that they must willingly cut back their energy use to set an example to the world, they obviously think they are being enlightened idealists but to their traditional audience they sound like Marie Antoinette. How on earth has it come to this? And is it so different from the conditions that produced Trump in America?
Well yes, it is. As a nation, the United States has a unique historical mission which many European observers fail to take into account. In a country without any aristocratic class, there is very little sense of inherited guilt (except about slavery, which is a different matter).
With few exceptions, the forebears of today’s Americans arrived with nothing. Most of them are only a couple of generations away from migrants not unlike those who are now flooding their borders in such alarming numbers. The only thing that all these disparate, displaced people had in common was a willingness to work, to aspire, and to make their own way to prosperity and proud independence. All that they asked of their government was to maintain the rule of law and to stand back and let them get on with building their new lives.
What follows from this is that there is no guilt attached to being wealthy and successful. You – or your family – earned that money through their own industriousness or talent.
Americans do not regard making a profit from what you do, or taking responsibility for your own future and that of your family as “selfish”. They see it as doing the right thing and giving a purpose to life. Many Europeans who do see this rather brutal work ethic and individual determination still do not necessarily understand what follows from it: there is no Old World feudal paternalism in America, and no noblesse oblige.
So there was a simple question for US voters to answer: which leader and political party respects my values – which I believe are the central values which made this country what it is? And we know what most of them decided. But what was unexpected is that a huge number of the Latino voters who might have been offended by Trump’s comments about Hispanic migrants, gave the same answer. That is a point which illuminates this chapter in the country’s history.
The Latino voters who have settled in the US were as concerned about the state of the economy as other voters. They wanted to work, to prosper, to make their way in life – just like everybody else. They did not come to America to be poor, or dependent on the state: they came to make a better, independent future for themselves.
Even for those observers who are appalled by the election result, that should be good news.