It could have happened here

Trump 2.0 shows the damage a Corbyn government would have wrought in Britain

Jeremy Corbyn (Credit: Jasn / Flickr)

In November last year, a plurality of Americans voted for Donald Trump. In doing so, they helped elect a man who was openly sceptical of Nato, sympathetic towards Russia and with an understanding of economics unchanged since the 1970s.

People around the world, including in Britain, have looked on aghast. How could this have happened? How could the United States — the leader of the free world, the cornerstone of the trans-Atlantic alliance and the post-World War II global order — turn against everything it once stood for? We should not have been so naive. In fact, the fate that has befallen America nearly happened here. Twice.

In 2017, Labour came within a few thousand votes of forming a government. This is something of a misleading statistic¹. The nature of Britain’s first-past-the-post electoral system means that small changes in voting patterns can swing dozens of seats. By the same logic, the Conservatives were only 50 switched votes away from a working majority.

Still, the point stands. Both in 2017 and 2019, the British electorate was offered the chance to make Jeremy Corbyn prime minister. This was no small decision. Like Trump, Corbyn offered a fundamental transformation of his country’s foreign policy and domestic economy. Clearly, both men come from different political traditions. Yet, their views exhibit a remarkable overlap.

Take foreign affairs. Trump is hostile to Nato and has effectively switched sides in Russia’s war against Ukraine. His ‘peace’ proposal appears to be a straightforward reward for Vladimir Putin’s aggression. He is also intensely hostile towards the European Union.

Is this not what Corbyn wanted for Britain? The former Labour leader believes that Nato is a manifestation of Western imperialism and has called for it to be disbanded. He is frequently quiet about Russian adventurism and credulous about its intentions.

Recall that in the aftermath of the Skripal poisonings, when the former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were poisoned by the nerve agent Novichok in 2018, the then leader of the opposition parroted the Kremlin’s talking points, that Britain should accept a Russian request to be handed a sample of the nerve agent, in order for them to run their own tests. Meanwhile, Corbyn is an even bigger Eurosceptic than Trump could ever hope to be.

Then there is economics. Trump has been obsessed with tariffs for half a century. His ruinous, economically illiterate policies have taken an American economy powering along and steered it onto the rocks. A recession is likely. Similarly, Corbyn sought a return to an earlier time, with widespread nationalisation and the repeal of trade union legislation. Moreover, it is not difficult to imagine a chancellor John McDonnell firing the Governor of the Bank of England, as Trump is threatening to do to the Federal Reserve chair.

What of democracy and the rule of law? Say what you like about Corbyn, but surely he’s not an authoritarian in the mould of Trump, who threatens the very notion of free and fair elections? Indeed, it is difficult to imagine Corbyn organising a January 6-style insurrection.

Except, there’s another overlap. Corbyn, despite being an MP since 1983, is not much of a believer in parliamentary democracy. Like his fellow Bennites, he is far keener on taking direction from party organs such as Labour conference or engaging in extra-parliamentary action to drive the march to socialism.

Then, we come to the Jews. Again, both men have reached their views on this particular group from different places. Yet both have an appalling record in this area and have associated with Jew haters. That is the thing about conspiratorial antisemitism — it attracts people from all ideological extremes.

No doubt, some people will take issue with the comparison of Corbyn with Trump. The former is a self-avowed anti-imperialist, the latter has threatened to annex Canada and Greenland. The former wanted to raise taxes on the rich, the latter is hollowing out the Internal Revenue Service to the extent that its ability to even collect taxes may be called into question. The former is vehemently opposed to Israel, the latter mused about turning Gaza into some sort of American resort.

Yet they are one and the same. They shared a desire to transform first their political party and then the country. It is not difficult to imagine that, once in power, Momentum, the pro-Corbyn pressure group, would have wielded tremendous influence and, through the threat of deselection, forced Corbynsceptic MPs to vote with their leader, just as one-time never-Trumpers have gone full MAGA. Once in power, I have no doubt that moderate Labour MPs would have rowed in behind Corbyn, as they did following the 2017 election, which Corbyn did not even win.

The point of this piece is not simply that two old men hold similar views across a range of issues. Rather, that political leaders are handed awesome power and some of them have bad ideas that they intend to implement and those ideas have consequences.

The UK can scarcely claim to be one of the world’s best governed nations in recent years, but in 2017 and 2019, it got away with a near-miss. Given this experience, we ought not act surprised that America in 2024 was not so lucky.

1. For more, read this excellent article by Anthony Masters for UK in a Changing Europe