The big lesson for Wales in Trump’s return to the White House

Martin Shipton

Hand-wringing about Donald Trump’s election victory is simply not good enough.

We need to recognise that his return to the White House reflects the profound disillusionment with mainstream politics felt by many millions of people in the United States – and that such feelings have strong resonances in Wales and Britain as a whole.

The next essential step is to do something about it.

It’s often been said that what happens in the United States happens in Britain some time later. Such are the cultural influences that America has on us that It would be foolish to disregard that.

Trump was described after the election result by the Irish Times’ political commentator Fintan O’Toole as “a sexual predator, a racist, a misogynist, a fraudster, a felon, a coup monger, an inveterate liar and a senescent spewer of increasingly deranged and vulgar nonsense”.

O’Toole added: “The world must now come to terms with the undeniable fact that the US has freely and fairly chosen to embody its values in a man it knows damn well to be all those things.”

Deranged

Of course every word of that is true, but it would be wrong to infer from O’Toole’s well-honed description that Trump’s voters are all psychotically deranged themselves.

Various reasons have been put forward for why the majority of voters backed him. A right-wing Labour friend opined: “For years people will be writing about how the Democrats took leave of their senses, imposing a woke West Coast woman without a primary election when the stakes were so high.

“She’s everything people don’t want. It’s like they’ve learned nothing. She was just the worst candidate for this race. It would be like Emily Thornberry running for Tees Valley Mayor.

“Young angry white men are drawn to Trump: Andrew Tate TikTok people.”

In Britain, we take comfort from reassuring ourselves that Trump could never be elected – that most people would see the character traits identified by O’Neill as factors that would disqualify him from holding any kind of public office or retaining any degree of respect.

For many Americans, however, Trump’s multiple sins are outweighed by the fact that he provides them with a convenient vent for the frustrations they feel as members of a downtrodden working class that feels it has been abandoned by the Democrats.

Looking at some statistics about the lives of working class people in the US underpins such concerns.

Since 2021, when the Biden-Harris team took power, the number of people living in food insecure households has risen from 33.8 million to 47.4 million.

Over the same period, poverty in the US has increased by 67%, from 25.6 million people living below the poverty line to 42.8 million.

And since 2020, the average annual food expenditure per US household has gone up by 35% from under $13,000 to $17,242.

Equally, the average hourly wage for blue-collar workers has barely increased since the 1970s.

Discontent

Figures like this explain the discontent of millions and point up why Trump’s language of toxic insurgency has such cachet. All the celebrity endorsements in the world won’t come close to matching the profound sense of alienation felt by so many.

Much was made by the British media in the run-up to the presidential election of the multitudes of women who would be voting for Kamala Harris because of the draconian restrictions on abortion introduced in some states since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, which for half a century had protected such rights.

In the end, the lead Harris had in the votes of women was more than outweighed by Trump’s votes among men – and it seemed that many women were more concerned about the rising cost of living than making a stand over reproductive rights.

Of course it’s profoundly shocking that such a vile man as Trump will once again be the supposed leader of the “free world” – not simply because of his detestable nature, but because of the uncertain consequences there will be for the rest of the world if he behaves according to his tyrannical instincts, which will be enabled by a compliant Congress.

Delivery

There is therefore all the more reason for us in Wales and Britain as a whole to put pressure on our politicians to concentrate on pursuing policies that will improve ordinary people’s standard of living. The focus must be on delivery in a way it rarely has been in recent years.

Blaenau Gwent Labour MS Alun Davies had confidently predicted that Kamala Harris would win the election. He acknowledges that he miscalculated.

He told me: “Trump’s election is a disaster for the US and for democracy everywhere. It poses a huge challenge to politicians on the progressive left.

What’s very worrying is that working class people in rust belt states voted for Trump in their droves.

“But I don’t believe that 73 million people voted for Trump because they are all misogynists or followers of Andrew Tate. Many of them did so because they feel that the Democrats are no longer representing their interests.

“What they’re concerned about is being able to afford a home, the rising cost of living, having a reasonably well-paid job and the ability to access decent public services. These are bread and butter issues, and those of us on the progressive left of politics have to prioritise such concerns.

“In the US, many people saw Trump as the politician who related to them. I’m sure that in Britain we in the Labour Party understand what has to be done.”

Brexiteers

It’s by no means clear, however, that such a message has got through to the “progressive left” on our doorstep. Why otherwise would Reform UK have gained as many votes as it did in July’s general election? And why, as things stand, is it likely to have a sizeable block in the Senedd after the election in 2026?

They are, of course, the same people who brought us the economic disaster that is Brexit, although that fact is rarely mentioned by Labour because they are officially Brexiteers too.

There’s a huge irony in the fact that those who exacerbated our economic problems are now exploiting them to their own political advantage.

Unless Labour delivers tangible improvements to people’s lives pretty quickly, it risks being consumed by the populist right.