Just You Wait…

Ben Wildsmith

As the world order seems to disintegrate there is a sense that the wider picture is pressing on everyone’s wellbeing.

I’ve noticed people who were previously engaged with current affairs withdrawing from them altogether as it’s so upsetting. Much of the rhetoric employed in politics these days is lowering.

To be involved at all involves rolling around in what you hope is mud but usually find not to be.

So, I don’t blame anyone for switching off from the chauvinism, xenophobia, racism, and bullying that blares across the airwaves and internet into our homes unless we actively prevent it.

Why should we spend our precious lives mired in the dull imaginings of lumpen thugs?

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Moral imperative

Well, aside from the moral imperative of decent people to speak truth to wickedness, there’s a less onerous and more cheerful reason to stay involved. These bozos aren’t going to last!

In the immediate afterglow of Donald Trump’s election victory, we are witnessing the high-water mark of the current version of right-wing populism.

The feel-good factor emanating from Trump and Elon Musk, or possibly Musk and Trump depending on how you rank that hierarchy, has filtered down through their acolytes to create the impression of a global movement on the up.

From Milei in Argentina, to Meloni in Italy via France, Germany, Hungary and a host of other franchises, the Trump-adjacent are brimming with confidence.

Viewed from afar, through the distorting lens of sensationalist media, these movements can seem to hold the whip hand. Their messaging is fresh and people all over the developed world are disillusioned with the lifestyles that traditional politicians have made available to them.

The world feels pregnant with change.

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Shoddy stitching

Only when you look at this political phenomenon close-up do you see the shoddy stitching that is holding it together.

Consider what this end of politics is serving up for us here in Wales. As a nation, we’re considered top of the hitlist for a populist takeover. Areas like mine in post-industrial valleys are supposed to be ripe for the taking.

Resentment at decades of neglect on Labour’s watch, we are told, will see Reform UK break through at the Senedd elections next year. That’s the theory. Reform UK are without a leader in Wales and seem to be considering the Clown Prince of Kippers, Mark Reckless, as their frontman.

Here is where I invite you to pour a glass of something pleasing and set aside your despair for a moment. Trump, Farage, Le Pen, Orban and the rest are, at their core, nativists.

Their appeal is to blood and soil nationalism that regards the state as a cultural expression of particular groups of people. For the latest incarnation of UKIP to resort to a leader with no substantial links to Wales at all can only signal the shallowness of its options.

In the background, of course, we have Andrew RT Davies who remains as voluble as ever. Things move quickly nowadays and it’s perfectly possible that the Trumpite thrust unto Wales might come from a rejuvenated Conservative Party.

Star transfer

Equally plausibly, RT might become a star transfer to Reform UK’s ranks. Here again, though, we have a nativist who doesn’t seem to remember what he’s native to.

In calling for Elon Musk to intervene in Welsh politics, Davies revealed the ideological emptiness at the heart of his offering.

Why exactly would a British Nationalist be exhorting a South African-born naturalised American to interfere in the politics of his own neck of the woods?

This week we saw Nigel Farage warning Keir Starmer to reverse UK policy on the Chagos Islands or face tariffs from Trump’s US government. Really, Nige? Where is our precious sovereignty now?

After all that guff about freedom to make our own laws, we’re to roll over in the face of foreign threats from your mate? Okay, got it.

The internal contradictions of this strand of politics are so fundamental as to render it unsustainable.

This week we have proponents of the Great Replacement Theory cheering on plans to evict Gazans from their land. It’s irony experienced as a wound from a rusty saw.

Economics

And then there’s the economics. Behind all this nationalist bluster and barely concealed white supremacy lies another bowlful of reheated Thatcherism.

The forces that have tipped the developed world into a crisis of unproductive inequality aren’t challenged one iota by Trump or any of his international acolytes.

On the contrary, their plans accelerate the transfer of value from public and private, from poor to rich.

So, none of this is going to work. In four years’ time when their flags have been dragged through the mud of real events, and their economics have pushed us all closer to ruin, these people will no longer be strutting around your social media feed like a Cowbridge Mussolini.

The illusion of change will, by necessity, give way to the real thing. What will count then is who bent the knee to these disgraceful fantasies and who refused.