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front-bench1H
ow are the mighty fallen. Two
weeks ago, ardent Remainer
MPs began their attack on Boris
Johnson with threats of stopping a
no-deal Brexit in any way they could.
A group of Conservative MPs even
appallingly agreed to enter talks with
Jeremy Corbyn about an alternative
stop-gap administration. Then, right
on cue, there came the leak by a
supposed disgruntled ex-minister of a
report code-named “Yellowhammer”
on the consequences of a no-deal
Brexit. Full of doom and gloom, it
inevitably told us that we are all, as
Private Frazer from Dad’s Army would
have said, “Doomed I tell ye, doomed!”
Perhaps the high point of this
absurdity came with the formerchancellor Philip Hammond claiming
that he knew the British people didn’t
vote to leave with no deal. He alone, it
appears, knows what motivated
people to vote for Brexit. Really?
Three years after the referendum,
when we were warned that our
economy would collapse if we voted to
leave, our economy has continued to
grow, employment has risen to record
levels, and we have received more
foreign investment than any other
country in the world except China. His
comments aren’t so much a case of
Yellowhammer as of yellow hubris.
But as ever in politics, a week has
proved to be a long time. All this
doomster rhetoric followed Boris
Johnson onto the plane as he left last
week to talk to Angela Merkel and
Emmanuel Macron. His demand to drop
the backstop would get short shrift,
the Remainers chortled, and he would
be sent home with his tail between his
legs. They waited but, instead, both
Merkel and Macron were willing to
listen and engage. Far from lecturing
him, they agreed to review his demand
that they ditch the backstop and try to
avoid a no-deal Brexit.
What these first encounters have
exposed is the utter failure of the
previous administration’s strategy,
one best characterised by the sort ofirrational fear that eats into the soul
and renders the fearful weak and
powerless. Ministers approached the
negotiations as a desperate supplicant
instead of as the fifth largest economy
in the word, with unrivalled reach and
influence around the world.
Boris’ approach couldn’t be more
different. His EU meetings have been
followed by the G7 summit at which,
worryingly for the leaders of the EU,
he and Donald Trump stole the show.
With strong indications of an early
trade deal with the USA, such UK/US
arrangements would change the
balance of power in the area of global
trade. In financial services alone,
we could set the global rules and
regulations for years to come – enough
to make the EU very worried.
However, there are genuine
concerns here that simply getting rid
of the backstop isn’t enough. Many
believe that what the UK really needs
is a basic free trade deal with a
standstill on regulations and tariffs
whilst this is completed after we leave.
I share those views – but I am
sanguine because I am sure Boris
understands that the deal Mrs May
struck is a pig’s breakfast, under which
the UK would surrender control to the
EU far beyond the backstop. This
includes the doctrine of direct effect ofBoris Johnson knows that
fixing Mrs May’s deal will
take more than removing
the dreaded backstopIaIn duncan
smIthan
D
onald Trump is on
course to lose the 2020
presidential election. His
approval rating hasn’t
cracked 45 per cent for
over two years and he’s
running behind key Democrats in the
polls. If he loses, a lot of people will
blame his populist politics. The Right
will say: “Here’s what happens when
you depart from free-market
capitalism.” The Left will say:
“Populism was really just white racism
and there aren’t enough whites to
keep Trump in power.” Populism, it
turns out, isn’t that popular.
But there is an alternative reading of
the Trump presidency, one that says
the real problem is that Mr Trump
hasn’t been populist enough.
Before I explain, a word in defence
of the president. However low his
ratings may be, the journalist Justin
Fox points out that he was actually the
second most popular leader at the G
meeting in France. Mr Trump has an
approval rating of just 41.6 per cent,
but Emmanuel Macron – globally
celebrated as the nemesis of Right-
wing populism – is on 28 per cent.
This is a tough time everywhere to
be in charge, similar to the late
Seventies and early Eighties. At thisexact point in their administrations,
Jimmy Carter was on 32 per cent and
Ronald Reagan 43 per cent.
But Reagan in mid-1983 was coming
out of Carter’s recession and, as the
economy dashed for growth, spurred
on by tax cuts, his popularity leapt to
dizzy heights. By contrast, Mr Trump
is already sitting on an economic
boom. So, why are his ratings so low?
Well, there’s a growing argument
among populist intellectuals that says
Mr Trump has slightly bungled their
project. Populism on the Right usually
flies on two wings: cultural
conservatism and an approach to
economics that borders on class war.
It’s the little people vs the elites.
Mr Trump has certainly exploited
cultural conservatism by taking tough
positions on, say, abortion or guns,
and he’s kept the country at peace.
Right-wing populism’s opposition to
war confuses the critics. Isn’t the Right
supposed to be pro-military? Of
course. But it’s the epitome of
decadent elitism to send young
Americans to die in pointless wars.
That’s an example of Mr Trump’s
gut populism: my people, my country,
my culture should always come first.
The problem is that it’s unclear how
well he understands the Judeo-
Christian settlement he is defending.
When asked if he was an Old
Testament or a New Testament guy, he
famously said: “Uh, probably equal.”
There’s not much of Jesus’s charity
or love in Mr Trump’s politics, and
quite a bit of loudmouth chauvinism.
This disguises a softer side to his
character: he deserves credit for
taking on America’s ghastly crisis of
addiction to popping pills. Opioid
prescriptions are down dramatically
since their peak in 2012, and overdose
deaths appear to be slowing. But Mr
Trump’s rhetoric eclipsesaccomplishment. Just when the
country calms down, he’ll tell a
non-white congresswoman to go back
to her own country, or announce he
wants to buy Greenland. Fatigue with
unrelenting controversy is alienating
the suburbs. Classic Republicans, like
small-town women and the college-
educated, are abandoning the party.
To be sure, the president has also
converted working-class Democrats in
swing states. But what has he done for
them that no one else could or would?
He could answer that he has cut the
taxes of middle earners by around
$1,000 a year. But Jeb Bush or Mitt
Romney would have done the same.
Republican elites point out that
Mr Trump’s wins have often come
when he governs like a textbook
Republican – only to be undermined
by idiosyncratic policies such as his
trade war with China.
Mr Trump’s conflict with China was
inevitable and might do good in the
long run (even Mr Romney once
promised to tackle trade cheats), but
for a populist to really be a populist,
they’ve got to take on America’s
corporate bullies, too. This is where
Right-wing populism hits a wall of its
own contradictions. When China put
new taxes on US goods last week, Mr
Trump tweeted: “Our great American
companies are hereby ordered” to stop
doing business with China. If he’s
willing to order business around to
kick China, why not do it to fight
poverty?
Mr Trump has shrunk the
Republican coalition by pushing out
old-school capitalists, but he hasn’t
expanded it nearly enough by drawing
in working-class populists. His tax cuts
largely favoured the rich. He won’t
reform an absurd healthcare system,
where it costs $32,000 simply to give
birth. The gap between the class warHe is both outrageous and
polarising, but that’s not
going to translate into the
majority he needs in 2020tIm stanleyey
jan etherIngton
Brexiteers should trust the PM’s strategy
Sunshine, Stokes
and Sanditon:
what a perfect
bank holiday
I
t’s the morning after the
bank holiday before. The
grass is damp and
cobweb-strewn in the
morning, the nights are
drawing in and it’s time to
head back to school and
work. So why are so many of
us still smiling?
Bank holidays usually
mean television pictures of
umbrellas blowing inside
out on rainswept
promenades, but last week
forecasters were beaming as
they shared the good news:
coast-to-coast sunshine!
Could it be true? Yes, we
were sunblest, and most of
us agree that this was,
indeed, the best bank
holiday ever.
The end of August can be
tinged with melancholy. As
we know, summer’s lease
hath all too short a date- especially in Britain – and
this summer has been a bit
“four seasons”, to put it
mildly. On the East Anglian
coast, we’ve had wild winds,
heavy rain, thick-jumper
mornings, fog... But then,
just as it was time to pack
away the swimming trunks
and bring out the school
name tapes, summer finally
came good.
In my Suffolk seaside
village, the population
quadruples over August. We
know it’s “the season” if we
walk down the street and
see someone we don’t
recognise. There are
lycra-clad joggers on the
marshes, startling the
ambling dog walkers, and an
angry cry echoes round the
Co-op: “What do you mean
you have no tri-coloured
quinoa?” But if you live
somewhere beautiful, other
people want to come and
see it. And, boy, did they
come over the weekend!
A sign went up at the top
of the village: “The car parks
are full.” But of course they
still chanced it, having to
turn round by the church
and go back, creating traffic
chaos. We had a beach
invasion like no other, with
many first-time sea
swimmers, happy to “come
on in” because the water
was lovely – an unbelievable
20 degrees.
EU law, which would allow UK judges
to strike down acts of Parliament
that don’t comply with EU law; the
implementation period, which we
would spend under EU control; and,
vitally, the fact that we would be tied
into EU control on defence and
security matters, an area where we
must regain our sovereignty.
But the Prime Minister also knows
that the Conservative Party is sitting
in the last chance saloon and that the
reason people are coming back to
support us is because he has pledged
to be out of the EU by October 31. He
is well aware that if we fail to deliver
this, the Brexit Party will destroy our
electoral prospects.
Delivering Brexit is what the
country wants, and it’s what we have
all fought for. It is vital to rebuilding
our sense of national self-respect and
to regaining a real sense of common
purpose. As we reflect on the years of
funk and failure since 2016, we must
recognise that this is at last within
touching distance. Let’s not fumble it
now by rushing early to criticise the
Prime Minister – and instead give him
the space he needs to achieve the full
Brexit he promised.Iain Duncan Smith is Conservative MP
for Chingford and Wood GreenTrump needs to act more like a
populist if he wants to win again
rhetoric of populism and reality is
most apparent on the southern border,
where progress on that “great wall” is
slow. Illegal migrants are still coming
in their hundreds of thousands.
Some populists, like the pundit Ann
Coulter, now accuse the president of
treachery, arguing that mass migration
helps the rich and hurts the poor.
Some suggest that, for populism to
work, it needs to tinker with American
capitalism itself. Among those daring
to think the unthinkable are tech
genius Peter Thiel, Fox host Tucker
Carlson, writer JD Vance and Senator
Josh Hawley. The senator recently
wrote that elite choices and obsession
with GDP growth are killing the
country, that the opioid epidemic is a
cry of “loneliness and despair”.
Few of these names started out as
Trump supporters; several changed
their politics in recognition that he
understood Middle America better
than they did. Most now talk of going
beyond the president and, by
implication, doing Trumpism better
than Trump.
This has lessons for Britain, where
we face equally big, post-Brexit
choices, and where the future of the
Right hinges, again, on one
personality: Boris Johnson. Do we
embrace cultural liberalism or push
back against the great awokening?
Will the state get out of the way, or use
its powers to protect the interests of
British workers?
One of the happiest consequences
of the Trump era is that it has forced
American conservatives to ask “what
is it we want to conserve?” – beyond
making money. But it has also shown
that populism’s reliance upon
charisma to challenge orthodoxy is a
hostage to fortune. If the leader makes
a mistake, the entire movement is
sunk.To order prints or signed copies of any Telegraph cartoon, go to telegraph.co.uk/prints-cartoons or call 0191 603 0178 [email protected]On Saturday, like many
villages around the country,
we held our summer fete.
The sun blazed down on the
picture-postcard green, as
our canon, Harry Edwards,
opened proceedings dressed
as a circus ringmaster and
escorted by a ukulele band.
We knew God was unlikely
to rain on Canon Harry’s
parade.
The sun also spotlit
Suffolk’s own Ed Sheeran,
who spent the weekend
playing homecoming gigs
in Ipswich.
Even the news seemed to
take a turn for the light-
hearted. The G7 summit
seemed remarkably
good-humoured, as our PM
met his fellow world
leaders. You don’t have to be
a Brexiteer to smile at the
image of Boris being
guarded by policemen on
paddleboards during his
morning sea swim.
On Sunday afternoon, as
we headed for the beach,
everyone we passed said:
“Isn’t it great? England won
the test!” Howzat?
We lit the firepit in the
garden, toasted
marshmallows – and Ben
Stokes and the England
cricket team – then watched
the sea-salty Jane Austen TV
drama Sanditon.
Yesterday, we learned,
was the hottest August bank
holiday Monday ever. Long
into day three, sausages
were being burned on
barbecues, ice creams were
melting in moments and our
happiness cup ranneth over- even when the pubs ran
out of cold lager.
There are those who say
we have too many bank
holidays crammed into the
first half of the year, and that
the late August one is
superfluous – or should
be moved into winter.
Killjoys! We need a sunny
break before the leaves
begin to fall.
And this fabulous August
bank holiday has ended our
season, in the sun. Now
bring on the mists and
mellow fruitfulness.
follow Tim
Stanley on Twitter
@timothy_stanley;
read more at
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opinionfollow Iain
Duncan Smith
on Twitter @
MPIainDS;
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14 ***^ Tuesday 27 August 2019 The Daily Telegraph
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