An Uncertain Future

Has the world ever been so clueless as to what is coming next?

Nowadays, election strategists are careful to avoid specific policy pledges in favour of vague ‘values’-based aspirations, so the concrete intentions of an incoming government are often not clear when it takes office.

Even then, as Rachel Reeves is finding out, overmighty financial institutions can exercise a de facto veto over decisions that displease them.

In the USA, however, things run to a different set of rules. The national debt ticks over on a privately-maintained digital clock in Times Square for everyone to see. It spirals off into unfathomable numbers without causing any of the nervousness we’ve seen in the UK Treasury this week.

American politicians can afford not to worry about it because, as yet, the world has no debt agency powerful enough to call it in.

The dollar may not be backed by gold anymore, but its pre-eminence in world affairs is guaranteed by silos full of nuclear weapons.

Donald Trump is notorious for stiffing his creditors in business. From banks to sole traders, he’s unwilling to pay anyone for anything. What are you gonna do about it? Cry harder, sucker.

Shifty electioneering

The uncertainty around his plans for government is very different from the shifty electioneering and loophole-dependent double talk of the UK administration.

With majorities in the House, the Senate, and the Supreme Court, the incoming president has no need to cloak his intentions. Still, though, nobody seems to have any idea what he plans to do.

His statements so far have been vague, threatening, and fantastical. Greenland and the Panama Canal might be taken by force; Canada might be economically coerced into the United States; illegal immigrants will be deported, perhaps 15-20 million of them; tariffs will be set on nations at levels determined by how well the president thinks they are behaving. The January 6^th insurrectionists might be pardoned…

Trump has suggested that he will be a dictator but only for one day. This suggests that the opening moves of his administration will be dramatic.

Executive orders

His repugnant spokesman, Sebastian Gorka, joked this week that the president risks injuring his wrist from the number of executive orders he will be signing on the day of his inauguration. It seems that Trump’s envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, announced himself by demanding Benjamin Netanyahu do business on the Sabbath and end the war in Gaza before Trump’s inauguration.

We will shortly find out if similar moves are afoot over Ukraine.

Many people find the prospect of Trump’s second term profoundly depressing.

The implications for women’s rights, race relations, the rule of law, international institutions, and democratic etiquette are potentially terrifying.

The damage that can be done in four years is limited but significant and there will undoubtably be innocent people for whom this administration is personally ruinous.

I do, however, see an upside in the long term. We are about to see palpable change on a scale that democracy has not delivered in a very long time.

Outmanoeuvred

Trump’s first term was hampered by an inexperienced team who were largely outmanoeuvred by establishment figures who knew how Washington works.

This time, whatever is planned will be insisted upon by those around the president. Whilst some of these changes will represent an outrage to decency for many of us, the spectacle of a democratic vote leading to demonstrably new ways of doing things might just reinvigorate democracies which were in danger of becoming moribund.

The UK election in July was undertaken with similarly vague offers by the politicians contesting it, but the months following its outcome have been marked by inertia and drift.

There is a feeling that democratic mandates only run so far in our society and that real change is effected by international forces, both political and economic.

Did Michelle Mone, for instance, fear an incoming Labour administration? It seems she had no cause to. The volte-face performed by Mark Zuckerberg this week suggests that he felt his personal position to be under extreme and immediate threat from the recently expressed will of the people.

I expect to be writing in horror about much of what is to come from across the Atlantic.

If a democratic mandate can be wielded with malevolent potency, however, it can also be used to dramatic effect in the service of better angels. Bring us politicians to do that.