Trump 2.0 and the Political Culture Shift

Jonathan Edwards

You didn’t need to be in sub-zero Washington to feel a growing chill as President Trump took the reins of the most powerful country on earth.

Witnessing the world’s richest man pumping out Nazi salutes left no one in any doubt that Trump was back and in a far stronger position than his first victory in 2016.

I’ve been scratching my head over recent days trying to work out why there has been a different reception this time to the incoming Trump presidency from the centre and left.

Trump’s victory in 2016 was met with a far stronger reaction whereas the second coming seems far more muted. The only theory I can come up with is that the first Trump presidency was seen by moderates and progressives as an aberration and that ”‘normality” would soon return.

This seemed vindicated by the subsequent Biden victory in 2020.

Anomaly

However, the fact that he has won for a second time more convincingly could indicate that in fact it was the Biden presidency that was the anomaly and that in the United States and across the world there is a political culture shift at work.

There is no outrage this time, just a bland acceptance. Those of a liberal persuasion are paralysed, not entirely sure how to react as their world view crumbles around their feet.

It was interesting that the foreign leaders’ guest list included a greatest hits of populists from Giorgia Meloni in Italy and Javier Gerardo Milei in Argentina.

The Westminster elite are completely obsessed with the so-called “special relationship”, which has always seemed to me to be completely one-sided having spent some time in DC.

The inauguration left no doubt which international relationships Mr Trump views as “special”, and it is those forces that rage against the establishment – any establishment. In response, progressives have been left defending the status quo – a very dangerous place to be when ordinary working people feel, with justification, that the system isn’t working for them.

Consolidate

Working on the assumption that Trump doesn’t do a Putin and change the constitution to stay in power longer than the four years he has allotted for his second term, the strategic challenge is how does Make America Great Again consolidate itself as a movement without its pivotal figure at the helm to contest 2028.

If as I suspect there has been a political culture shift, then MAGA could reinvent itself successfully, though the battle to be the heir to Trump will be bitter. This provides an opportunity for the Democrats if they can recover from shell shock. Forget Trump, portray him as a lame duck and go after those positioning behind him.

To respond to the culture shift those on the left and centre politically are going to have to revisit everything they stand for. Progressive politics has lost its way. I would describe myself as a socialist, but my political driving force was economic justice. The left of today has no compelling economic narrative for those that are left behind.

To make my point for me, the Labour UK Government seems poised to embark on an austerity path to meet self-imposed fiscal targets.

Identity issues

Instead, 21st Century progressive political philosophy seems to be solely focused on identity issues which are easily swatted away by the culture wars of the right, enabling them also to mask their true raison d’être of wealth polarisation.

Across the world there is a backlash against the moral grandstanding and the cancel culture tactics at the heart of modern progressive politics. This explains why working class people and billionaires align happily, even though their economic interests are as opposed as Superman and green kryptonite.

I should balance my argument by stating that there are some on the left politically who argue optimistically that what we are witnessing is a swing of the pendulum which will turn against the populists in no time.

In many ways I hope they are right but I can’t help feeling this is a lazy analysis.

The London papers taunt Wales as being the “wokest country in Europe” as a result of the political approach of the Labour Party in Wales and Plaid Cymru.

The Welsh political establishment had better hope that 2025 will witness a swingback – for if there is a cultural shift at work the whole devolution project could soon be in peril.

Jonathan Edwards was the MP for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr 2010-2024