What does a Trump victory mean for the US and for us?
Jonathan Edwards
In less than a month the world from a Western perspective could look very differently.
If the latest polling intelligence is correct, Donald Trump is pulling clear in some of the key swing states that determine the US Presidential election.
There is a reason why Elon Musk has reportedly set up base in Pennsylvania and is offering $1m daily incentives for people to register to vote Republican on November 5.
If the last Trump Presidency was characterised by complete chaos, the general feeling is that if he were to win, matters will be far more organised this time, with a very dangerous and sinister programme driving the actions of the White House.
Project 2025
The New York Times has reported this week on the close links between the Trump team and the Heritage Foundation and their so-called Project 2025. In the interest of balance, I should declare that Trump has distanced himself from the Foundation, claiming he knows “nothing” about it.
However, the essential Project 25 aims of dismantling the institutions of the state and exerting executive control resemble closely the rhetoric Trump likes to deploy.
Project 2025 is a 900-page document published by the Heritage Foundation in 2023 – but it is far more than just a very large manifesto. The AP news agency reports it is a political project in the true sense of the word, including a first 180-day playbook for the new administration and a database of 20,000 individuals to be deployed to staff a new Trump White House.
This indicates an unheralded degree of planning; matters have been organised down to the last dot. If implemented, the ground will be hit running on turbo boosters with the aim of restructuring the federal government with the FBI and Homeland Security coming under direct Presidential control.
Conservative Christian values
Specifics include politicising the Justice Department; dismantling the Department of Education; the so-called “deep state” will be dismantled by making it possible to sack thousands of civil servants to be replaced by MAGA (Make America Great Again) devotees; the executive branch of US governance will fall completely under the control of the President; the government and wider society will be infused with conservative Christian values.
It is undoubtedly a lurch towards autocracy – some would say fascism. Legal experts are warning that civil liberties and the rule of law will be undermined; the Church will be incorporated into the state; and the separation of powers central to the US constitution will be blurred.
In policy terms it advocates cuts to health support; abortion will not be considered a health care issue; environmental regulations will be slashed and fossil fuels promoted; legal protections against discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identification will be removed; and diversity and equality programmes will be cut, while the Department of Justice will be encouraged to prosecute anti-white racism. Frighteningly the military will be used for domestic law enforcement.
Deportations
As we approach the closing stage of the race Trump is ramping up rhetoric on immigration, promising mass deportations. We are talking about figures in the range of 11 million people. Leaving aside the cost of such a policy and the economic and social destruction that it would entail; we are witnessing a direct challenge to the liberal political order that has governed Western societies for generations.
If Trump wins, the world will immediately become a darker place. With the right in the UK also heading towards this path both mainstream and fringe, what might well be rolled out in the States after January’s inauguration could be heading this way very soon.
The left and the centre of the political spectrum in the UK and in Wales must unite. Rather than leaning to the right in an appeasement strategy, Prime Minister Starmer must bridge to the left and build a coalition able to withstand the waves driving the tides of history. To do so the Labour UK and Welsh governments need a moral purpose that can enthuse.
Next week’s UK Government Budget in my eyes is not just a big financial event, it is a gigantically important political event. If we don’t get a clear sense of direction from the Budget, then the Labour government will find itself attacked from all sides. The centre that Starmer occupies won’t hold.
Does the UK Government have a masterplan? We are about to find out.
Jonathan Edwards was the MP for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr from 2010 until 2024
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The US is a very polarised country. If Trump wins and does start to implement some of the radical policies mentioned the country could well be heading for civil war. A US caught up in internal strife could well give autocrats around the world the green light to do what they want ( far worse than their actions now). So Harris needs to win and Trump needs to end up behind bars
Very polarised view – right/wrong, black/white, true/false, – which will only lead to disappointment when the “wrong” candidate wins the election. The major concern for me is the shocking weakness of both candidates. Trump is now showing his age, his decline into some form of dementia or poor cognitive condition, rambling away like an angry old man in a bar. Harris’ lack of vision is hidden by the fact that “she’s not Trump” which may suffice for now but won’t drive change in 2025 and onwards. She also rants but not yet in Trump style, but she needs more coherence,… Read more »
Clearly a Trump win could prove disastrous for us all and the rise of the far right both nationally and internationally has to be resisted. Democracy has been and is being sold off to the highest bidder as political parties morph into one common neo liberal, monetarist ideology, both in the US and the UK. Here the Tories and Labour are practically one in the same while the markets, ie big money, seem to rule the roost. How the neo liberals parties could work with the left is difficult to imagine, it would involve a major shift in the ruling… Read more »
There is nothing liberal about what is happening.
What is happening is monopolisation of wealth, power and capital into oligarchs.
Liberty is gradually being removed in the US, UK and elsewhere.
Describe it as ‘Monopoly capitalism’.
Plaid Cymru in Cymru, SNP in Scotland, Sinn Fein and Alliance in Ireland, Greens and Liberal democrats in England must show there is an alternative.
True liberalism is egalitarian: a society of freedom, choice and access to justice and wealth.
For us it will mean whatever Clark of Kent wants it to mean…he has is own way of thinking…
Trump will rename London Clarksville if he wins, same sh*t bigger fan…
Trump has already told the world what he will do, he will go after the press and politicians that called him out correctly (he wonders if he can use the army to that). he will drop Ukraine onto putins lap. He will try to set his family up as a dynasty in control of the US. His words. His other words absolutely guarantee his claims of cognitive health are completely false. He often stumbles and bumbles his way through many a stand up, he is incoherent and confused yet he bleated on about Biden. And if Trump has to stand… Read more »
Anyone who has read Miles Taylor’s Blowback will know that Trump isn’t the brains this time around. It’s those behind him who are the real danger, and it seems they have control. I don’t know whether a second Trump presidency would trigger a civil war, but those hoping to challenge him democratically will be all out of luck as democracy as we understand it will be as dead as a dodo. Quite how there will be a pushback to Trump and MAGA who seem hell-bent on founding a dystopian society like that described in A Handmaid’s Tale, I don’t know,… Read more »
Worth a read? But oh yeh, there are a lot of hooks into the bloke and his business. I am taking his action and words myself at the moment from the press reports etc. But love a good insight book (held off on this person for some reason and tempted by Woodward, will wait till after election) I still think Trump is a danger in himself. He has already taken the rnc, however more and more Republicans are coming out against him which is refreshing. When I followed the senate inquiry it was clear that Pence and Pelosi were in… Read more »
My over the top cents worth. No-one who hasn’t lived in rural US (like I have) can possibly understand the MAGA movement and the evil of the satanic entourage that follow Trump. People in the US are not fundamentally ‘like us’. They don’t have any idea or knowledge of who (or where) we are or the lives we (try to) live. They don’t care. It’s not ‘politics’ or money – it’s religion. They (half of them) are in the grip of the religious psychology and the emotional impact of the ‘Left Behind’ Series of books by Tim LaHaye and Jerry… Read more »
All whipped up into 250mph winds, did you see what the did to the Earth…
Sat there with Melanie all those years ago…
I’ve lived in the US Midwest so I do understand where your coming from. At the time (late 90s/early 2000s) whatever Fox News, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly or Rush Limbaugh said was the gospel truth. You had grown adults convinced that the theory of evolution was propaganda, and that free healthcare was a form of communism. Its far worse now, Limbaugh’s death with Alex Jones who is far worse and Tucker Carlson who spouts pro-Russia propaganda, as their new ‘reliable’ news source. Thankfully the UK doesn’t have religious nutters like you get in the Bible Belt, but the rise in… Read more »
With a large amount of former Trump appointed Gov, military and legal officials, now saying he is either unfit for office, opposing his re election, and in some cases endorsing his opponent, Kamala Harris, I would have thought the alarm bells would be ringing for a lot of American voters, but as with a certain Mr Hitler, with his foorsoldiers on the streets ( proud boys etc), and the press and large sections of the media on his side, this vote could go either way. Personally I hope he loses.
Packing the Govt. with Trump devotees seems similar to this Labour Govt. with their cronyism. Perhaps Trump got the idea when he met Starmer.
Trump was at this 2016, Starmer only just got on the opposition front bench at that time. So, no prize biscuit here.
If you want a UK comparison, look to Boris Johnson, right out the gop play book.
Trump claims to be a successful businessman, self made, but started with cash from his father. Trump vodka failed, Trump airlines failed, Trump steaks failed, Trump university failed, and paid millions out in compensation. 6 times between 1991 and 2009 Trump hotel and casino businesses have declared bankruptcy. He claims to have been in, and is in great health, passing all medicals with flying colours, except the most important one, the Army medical he failed for Vietnam service, cheated on his first wife, with his second, cheated on a pregnant wife with a porn star, called captured American war veterans… Read more »
Yet he’s a billionaire and about to win a 2nd term as USA president: I’m not sure he’s gagging to hear your personal appraisal.
Sorry but Gareth is spot on (he should of added about what he said to John McCain being captured as well), he was born with a spoon in his mouth, just because your rich doesn’t make you a genius, do you really think he understands or even cares to understand what ordinary people think? He appeals to the misinformed and disillusioned (I know as I have lived there). I’m not saying that the Democrats are any better but Trump certainly is not the answer, and if definitely a threat to democracy who should have been disqualified from ever running from… Read more »
Yes, I am surprised he could be re elected, regardless of money, he is a convicted sex offender, that alone should tell the electorate of his character, not one I would want leading our country , but it seems like many are happy to overlook this and sing his praises.
A dark side to humanity has been cultivated in both the US and the UK for some time. A gamut of false narratives and grievance of varying extremes has been washed down with celebrity garbage. The Right Wing always does this. Whip up a mob and cream off their votes. The corporate centrists can’t fight it off and the Left are too busy engaging in Sino-Russo apologetics apparently swayed by the mistaken belief that those two states are somehow benign socialist internationalist players whose attempts at a “multi-polar world” will bring us all to some sunlight uplands.
Depressing.
There is no good outcome here, both liars with dark sides.
It’s curious how Trump’s supporters and opponents are united in believing that his second term would be very different to his first. Yes, his hangers-on have more of a plan this time, but should they take power, they will still have to deal with an incompetent and increasingly senile Chief Executive, and a political system perfectly designed to prevent any government from getting anything done, whether good or bad. Project 2025, if implemented, would certainly make the US a darker place; but though you wouldn’t know it from UK media reporting, matters of US domestic politics are of limited relevance… Read more »
Quote “The one thing that would disrupt US foreign policy would be a disputed result followed by a civil war, which in my view would be the best possible outcome, not for Americans but certainly for the rest of us.” A civil war wouldn’t be good for anyone. The divisions it would cause, not just within the US but internationally as well plus the enormous loss of life. Do you not have any family or friends in the US? Granted US foreign policy has got to answer for, but thats not the fault of its citizens. The foreign policies of… Read more »
But it’s quite conceivable that political opponents and journalists hostile, or indeed anyone else who criticises Trump and his supporters under a Trump presidency will end up dead or imprisoned. Trump is on a par with Putin and Xi Jinping, and probably as vindictive as Kim Jong Un.
A Trump win in the USA could conceivably render NATO pretty much obsolete, at least in the form that we’ve effectively been accustomed to it over the last seventy-odd years. Europe would then need to look much more to its own defence in the context of a more isolationist USA. However, Brexit in the UK, the continuing political success of Fidesz in Hungary and recent political trends in Slovakia – plus one or two other political shifts as well – suggest that we’re not exactly in a positive position to do that. Putin may think that his prospects in the… Read more »
The look on Trumps face at the Helsinki conference after a private chat with Putin should say it all. Did putin show him that tape?