Words matter: could Trump’s assault on democracy happen here?

The chilling and tragic events of 6 January in Washington will produce a huge amount of comment and analysis here. The US is unique. America’s politics are its own business, but what happens there affects the world like nowhere else. So not only do we feel here that we have a stake in what goes on over there — we really do.

Our liberal democracies are not the only means of governing, but where they are established the loss of any of them is dangerous to us all. We acknowledge that democracy may be under pressure in many places, but where it seems as firmly established as the sun rising every day, we are right to be both shocked and worried by events which appear to undermine it. 

One of the worries is that politics is catching. It doesn’t exist in a vacuum. What happens in one place can happen in another, for good or ill. That’s how wars break out, and how the intervening peace is established. 

To what extent was what happened in Washington a singular event, or an infectious one — not least to the UK? The combination of Trump and contemporary US society seems uniquely fitted to what has happened. The Presidential selection system cannot happen in the UK. An individual can take over any of the main parties to become leader, but not on their own. The need for election to Parliament, and the testing out of an individual in such an environment, help to militate against the election of a complete inadequate. It is hard to imagine a person as personally objectionable and unpleasant, as well as uneducated in governance, as Donald Trump was known to be, becoming the elected head of Government in the UK. 

The right to bear arms, and all that goes with it in terms of debate and identity, is also unique to the US, a militia waiting to happen. While virtually an open and shut issue in the UK, it is far from simple in the US, and we fail to understand US culture if we apply our own norms. The same goes for the religious background. While we have the odd gripe from Tories should a bishop mildly criticise a Government policy, the strength of an evangelical movement based around the right to life, and, to an extent, Israel provides a political platform unknown here. It has been deliberately and cynically courted by the Right for years, to the despair of many Christians in the US. Rallying both these forces through portraying them as under threat is distinctively American. 

Electing a narcissist with few scruples over how to win and hold power in such an environment was therefore an accident waiting to happen. But we would be unwise not to notice how the tools of power are commonly applied these days. Politics translates, which is why pollsters, analysts and practitioners spend time in each other’s countries, watching out for “what works”. I think there are several contemporary danger signs. 

US society has been more politically polarised than ours for some years, but Brexit helped us down the same road, on both sides. The impact of the way in which the 2016 referendum was conducted has left a scar. Ensuring you stand on an “anti-Washington” platform has been par for the course in the US for a while, but we are catching up. The sense of a political “elite”, of “Westminster” being a place held in contempt rather than one where you could do something good for your constituents, is very different even to when I was first elected in 1983. This has gone beyond an old-fashioned British wariness of MPs into something darker. Speak to MPs about their emails, their social media abuse, to women MPs about the threats to them. Separating representatives from their public and undermining any sense of their authority is a key step towards fascism. Listen to how Trump ridiculed those who were against him. 

You need to reinforce this by messaging. While newspapers have bias you can purchase, neutral broadcasting disappeared in the US with the media revolution, and the appearance of a dedicated, politically right-wing Fox News channel. Add that to social media echo chambers, and your public no longer need to make their own minds up, but are fed a relentless one-way news traffic, in which “alternative facts” are let loose. 

We already have social media, used extensively now in messaging by the major parties, closely related to how much money they call in from their donors, whether private individuals or unions. So watch out for “defund the BBC”. If you can knock out impartial news, you are on your way to what we saw yesterday. However, this puts a crucial obligation on news media to retain a degree of impartiality, and on each broadcaster to be ruthless with itself if it falls from such a standard and plays into the hands of those who want to create Fox-type channels. 

Equally there is an obligation on mainstream politicians. For all his faults, Trump’s success was based on real feelings among his voters of being excluded, of work going elsewhere, of not being listened to. In the UK we saw this over Brexit, where those like me who took it as axiomatic that we should remain in the EU missed for too long what was being used against such a belief, that if life was crap for some, why was a status quo — which included the EU — such a good thing? Today’s British politicians must not make such a mistake, as we build back after Covid and Brexit. Just as for Joe Biden, mainstream politics has got to work again.

And finally, words do matter, as the Chaplain to Congress said yesterday. The way in which we frame our arguments, even how we address each other (“traitor”, “saboteur” etc.) deteriorated markedly with the disputes over Brexit. The slide from a decent patriotism into a more risky nationalism, as we have seen for some years in the US, is very rapid. If you can portray your opponents as lacking any right to an opinion, and if you get away with abuse, you’re on your way. 

There is no reason why what happened in Washington should happen here. But the way to guarantee that it will happen is to think that it could never happen here. 

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