Soft power is something Donald Trump doesn’t understand. He only appreciates the brutal kind. This week your diarist saw a picture of graffiti in Canada, which pointed out, starkly: “There is no enemy like a friend betrayed”. How true. As the world superpower, America once had friends around the globe. But not anymore. All gone.
Whatever happens from here on, for Americans of whatever political persuasion, it’s going to be a cold and unforgiving world out there. You can’t buy or bully or invade everybody. The days of American hegemony are gone for good.
*
As this compelling scenario plays out, it looks as though the American economy will follow Elon Musk’s Starship 8 in what was called “a rapid unscheduled disassembly”. (It blew up.) President Trump’s visceral opponents will want blood; his supporters will see his eventual downfall as treason by the unbelievers. It could get very nasty, and we have to wonder how long such a huge country as the United States, with so many disparate views on the world, can actually remain united.
That is for them, but whatever happens to that country, it will create a further tsunami of economic chaos and disruption across the world. So whatever menace we face is likely to be two-headed: Russian expansionism and Trumpian caprice.
*
This diary has not commented on Keir Starmer’s plans to get the poor to buy all our new defence procurements. Richard Murphy said enough in his piece for East Anglia Bylines this week:
“If defence is going to work, it has to be for the benefit of everyone. You can’t, therefore, punish the poor for it. Because, like it or not, most people on benefits in the UK not only deserve them but are absolutely dependent upon them and are still living in poverty.
“Therefore, the price of defence cannot fall on the most vulnerable in this country who we have a duty to defend as a basic right. If we don’t defend their rights, what are we trying to defend?”
One would merely add these figures. According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the top 10% of the British population own 57% of the country’s wealth; and the bottom 50% own less than 5%.
*
Regular readers of Pecksniff will know how this diarist has always disparaged the idea of the Reform Party becoming serious contenders. After all, that would involve Nigel Farage (Clacton) resolving the very conflict he has lived by. The revolution always eats its children, and at some point there comes a divergence between the façade of comparative rectitude necessary to be taken seriously, and continuing to placate the ravening hordes one has inspired to get this far.
So Mr Farage’s very public fall-out with Rupert Lowe (Gt Yarmouth), the Jean-Paul Marat de nos jours, was entirely predictable: in fact Pecksniff has been predicting it for weeks. Bridges have been burned and there is no way back.
Already we see the knuckle draggers on social media rejecting Mr Farage as a traitor and describing him – at last – as only ever in pursuit of his own interests. A YouGov poll shows a third of Reform voters would do better without him. It is claimed he has threatened any party member who speaks to the press with expulsion from the party.
Somebody once remarked that a man who loves himself can never be accused of promiscuity in his affections, which perhaps Mr Farage’s supporters are coming to realise. Better late than never, presumably, but what is Reform without the dubious charisma of Nigel Farage?
*
Support for Reform across Norfolk is reported to be split between the two factions… but wait! Make that three.
Catherine Blaiklock is the woman who launched the Brexit Party, then Nigel Farage wrested it from her. (As the result of some minor issue involving unwise social media posts about Muslims.) It appears there are numerous old scores to settle, and the current Farage farrago has emboldened Ms Blaiklock to return to her roots. She has set up the New Brexit Party.
But forever cognisant of the interests of readers, your diarist will be visiting the elysian coast of Gt Yarmouth next week, to judge public opinion for oneself.
*
At the same time, these rancid convolutions collide with the brouhaha over Donald Trump and Ukraine. Until now, power without responsibility could hardly have been offered to Nigel Farage on cheaper terms. But now it’s make your mind up time, and Mr Farage has been caught avec le pantalon descendu: committed to the Trump mendacities at the very time Britain looks as though we may break cordial relations with him.
For a self-proclaimed patriot, this is an uncomfortable – not to say humiliating – position in which to find himself.
*
By now we should be infinitely prepared for any depths of moral depravity by the Conservative Party. But last weekend they announced they were advocating treating some people as less than human.
This is proclaimed as the most significant policy announcement so far from Kemi Badenoch (NW Essex). The aim is to stop British judges interpreting the Human Rights Act in ways that the Tories don’t like: to whit, assuming that those seeking refuge here actually have human rights. This entirely overlooks the point that interpreting the law is exactly what judges are for.
The whole point of the Human Rights Act is to prevent this kind of gross moral turpitude. They are called universal human rights because they are considered universal: that is, we all have them.
In what elaborately drawn scale of values does anybody decide that there are some groups who deserve to be treated as less than human? Are there no recent historical episodes which might give pause to such a view?
Either, Ms Badenoch is choosing to sit alongside some of the greatest monsters of the 20th century, or she is astoundingly stupid. Really, one tries to avoid direct personal insults, but if so then if the woman were any thicker she would set.
*
Andrew Pakes (Peterborough) has been causing ripples in the Commons’ Environment, Food and Rural Affairs select committee, in their investigation into the water industry.
“Does the amount of raw sewage that gets pumped out by yourselves as a company have a direct link to how you pay dividends?” he asked the water industry representative. After a thoughtful and notably suspicious pause, Mr Pakes is given the less than reassuring response: “I’d probably say no.”
His interlocutor wears a noticeably taut and tight-lipped expression, which experts in body language suggest might tell us he has something to hide. We shall no doubt hear more from this investigation, and from Mr Pakes.
*
Last week, Pecksniff wrote of a new group of Labour MPs, the Coastal PLP caucus, set up to promote the interests of their coastal communities, often in poor economic health and prey to the poisonous propaganda of Reform.
This week we hear that the energetic Liberal Democrat Steff Aquarone (N Norfolk) has secured a debate in the Commons next week, aimed at just the same communities. It will be interesting to note how much common ground they share, and how well they work together. Mr Aquarone confirms to your diarist that several Labour MPs have made clear they would like to speak in the debate, so that’s a start.
*
Liz Truss never needs encouragement, but this time it is courtesy of Canadian media, who thought it a good wheeze to ask her what she thought of Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of England who has just been sworn in as Canada’s new prime minister.
Ms Truss duly obliges by finding a roundabout way of blaming him for the present government’s policies, which she says will bankrupt Britain. She does so with little fervour, perhaps expecting that she won’t be taken seriously, what with being the person who did just about bankrupt Britain.
Poor Ms Truss is not looking too well, my dears. Being universally ridiculed clearly doesn’t agree with her. She looks a bit as though she is made of marzipan. And she has taken on that disconsolate gaze of a woman pushing a trolley around Swaffham Tesco, one of those meek who seem unlikely to inherit the earth. Whereas Ms Truss has always behaved as though she expected it to be served up to her on a silver platter, before she went on somewhere.
*
“I was as virtuously given as a gentleman need to be; swore little; diced not above seven times a week; went to a bawdy-house not above once in a quarter of an hour. Villainous company hath been the spoil of me.”
Not, as you might imagine, any one of the wise men at the Muckrakers as closing time approaches – though you would have been close. It is of course Shakespeare’s Falstaff. But if we are fortunate, my dears, then villainous company might be the spoil of us all.
The world is going to the dogs, so surely we all deserve a little villainous company at the moment. Your average leftie worries about everything, but always while standing on the outside, looking in. Even in run-of-the-mill times we find so much to protest about, metaphorically holding up placards outside wherever the real decisions are being made. (Perhaps with the addition of a soupcon of well-modulated middle class angst.) But it is time we grew some cojones and claimed our seats at the table as of right. A la lanterne! A little villainous company will help in that regard.
Of all the many worries impressing themselves on you at the moment, dear reader, ignore three quarters of them. It is true that the British liberal is only happy when he is as miserable as sin about the world and doing nothing about it, but taking up villainous company will help with that too.
Forget Messrs Trump and Putin: we can do nothing about them. Let the Americans get out of their hole: we can’t help them, (only curse them). Enjoy the spring, put your faith in strong drink and, in search of such villainous company, you might consider the serried ranks of East Anglia Bylines. We are always looking for new colleagues: writers, editors, researchers, spies, and of course villainous company. Join us.
You will feel the benefit. Perhaps we might share a pint of Old Unprintable amid the leisured opulence at the Muckrakers Arms some time. Don’t bother to dress.
Write to editor@eastangliabylines.co.uk, or chat at @pecksniffsdiary.bsky.social .
*
With thanks this week to Liz Crosbie, Celina Błędowska and Karl Whiteman.
*
<<< Previous Pecksniff’s Diary
