When did reactionaries get so anti-patriotic?
As we speak, Keir Starmer and his cabinet are embarking on four years of make or break relationship management with our American siblings. The upside could be huge. A trade deal with America, which both Trump and Starmer have hinted at, would give British businesses access to the world leading AI, chips, resource production, high tech manufacturing, that Britain needs to reach American levels of wages and goods. If Starmer succeeds, Britons will be richer for generations – and not only that, but other countries, including the EU, would look on Britain with envy and admiration as the world reacts to Trump tariffs.
But he has a tightrope to walk. Trump is a famous lover of Britain, and especially the British monarchy, and many around Trump think that in order to best take on China, the USA needs to rekindle a close alliance with Britain so that Britain does not following the EU in staying neutral in a future trade war. In contrast, Elon Musk, J D Vance, and the hyper-online members of the American radical right have a deep scepticism about Starmer and the Labour project, no doubt because Starmer’s focus on workers rights and fair wages runs up against the profiteering of Musk, Peter Thiel, and the pro-plutocrat caucus.
So not only is it patently absurd for online extremists to talk about a ‘genocidal rape’ of British women in the hundreds of thousands, it betrays a cynical, anti-patriotic strain: they would rather Starmer fail than Britain win. And, what’s worse, Kemi Badenoch and the Conservatives are egging on the criticism of Britain, rather than acknowledge the Tory failure to properly investigate grooming gangs over the last 14 years.
Labour is now committed to regional inquiries which will add to the Jay inquiry – the inquiry commissioned by the Tories and now disowned by them in a shameful act of hypocrisy. In the meantime, if the radical right were truly the patriots they claim to be, they would tell the truth: that even though the British state has a capacity to fail, in this case remarkably, Britain as a nation remains one of the best places to live in the world, and Trump and Musk would be wise to stay friends with it.
