The world in 2016 | Brexit, Trump and the new normal

There was a sense of déjà vu to waking up to Donald Trump’s victory on November 9th. It was exactly the same feeling to which we woke up to Brexit in June. For me, it felt like having a big chunk of everyday normality brutally but democratically sliced away. For despite any reservations on has on the state of the European Union and Hillary Clinton’s expired brand of ‘third way’ politics, waking up to the reality of bigots celebrating their victories was not just demoralising but a clear sign that what was considered outrageous just a few years ago is now becoming the new normal.  

Sure enough the similarities in the dynamics leading to the election of Donald Trump in the USA and Brexit are impressive. Both were the result of popular support among a category of white and less educated voters living in marginalised run down industrial areas with low immigration numbers.  

For support for both Trump and leaving the EU was far lower in urban areas – inhabited by more educated voters, including many working class voters in urban centres like Manchester, Liverpool, London, New York and Los Angeles – who are far more exposed to immigration and multiculturalism than voters in Ohio and Lincolnshire.    

In a clear sign that voters were driven by the fear of immigration rather than immigration itself London, which absorbed 133,000 of the 330,000 net arrivals in 2015, voted the most strongly for remain. Manchester also voted for remain – and at 13,554 had nearly double the level of net migration seen in Birmingham, which voted leave.

The white working class myth

Brexit and Trump’s triumph were the result of generational divide; an imposition made by older voters who largely supported Brexit and Trump on younger voters who largely supported Remain and Clinton

Clearly the “white working class” myth perpetuated by a lazy media in the wake of Brexit and the election of Trump, ignores the fact that multiculturalism is not an experiment concocted by social engineers in a remote lab but a living reality composed of millions of working class and middle class communities living in metropolitan centres. While in regions where Trump and Nigel Farage triumphed people’s perception of migrants was shaped by the right wing tabloids, in regions hostile to both, people’s perception of migrants was formed by real everyday life. 

Moreover Brexit and Trump’s triumph were the result of generational divide; an imposition made by older voters who largely supported Brexit and Trump on younger voters who largely supported Remain and Clinton. The question is whether this can be blamed on a dying breed or on voters becoming more conservative and insular, as they grow old.

In an ageing society this divide between young and old becomes even more crucial.  In different contexts young educated women are emerging as the strongest bastion against the hard right. In Austria, while the Green economist Alexander Van der Bellen won over the far-rightist Norber Hofer, who was howvever supported by 54% of male voters, but 62% of female voters rejected him. Ultimately the suggestion that women, minorities, the young and the educated people are not working class enough suggests a cultural racism, which relegates and restricts the working class to a bunch of 'despicables' who (alongside the majority rich conservative voters) voted for a bigot who openly flaunted his racism and glorified ignorance and thrived in a culture of anti intellectualism. 

When the polls got it wrong

The drama surrounding both events was also amplified by an aura of surprise as both were to some extent unforeseen by the polls. While this was the case in the UK where polls showed a tight race in which the yes had a lead, polls correctly predicted Clinton winning the popular vote by two million votes.  

Surely both events can be attributed to a higher turnout in areas supporting Trump and Brexit and a lower turnout in areas where a majority of voters rejected them. In many ways both events can be blamed on freak results rather than an inevitable pattern; just a couple of thousand votes for Clinton in a couple of states would have pushed the race away from Trump… and a higher turnout among the young would have kept Britain in the EU. Yet the result may also be attributed to the failure of Clinton in the US and Cameron and Corbyn in the UK to motivate remain voters. 

A power grab by an unscrupulous elite?

Finally both Brexit and Trump’s election have been depicted as a rebellion against the establishment. Yet Trump’s 17 cabinet-level picks have more wealth than one-third of US households combined – 43 million households. Wilbur Ross, Trump’s nominee for commerce secretary, amassed a fortune of $2.5 billion through decades at the helm of Rothschild’s bankruptcy practice and his own investment firm, according to Forbes. Nothing could have been more evocative of the brave new world than the picture of Farage with US President-elect Donald Trump in a gold-plated lift inside Trump Tower in New York.

This does not come as a surprise. The mistake would be to overwrite this as a sort of betrayal of the aspiration of voters who voted Trump to power. In reality the so-called working class voters who elected him may themselves admire Trump for being himself, the rich successful man who plays according to his own rules.

Take Brexit. It was actively backed by Rupert Murdoch’s media empire – whose unscrupulous newspapers have always backed the Tories (except for a short love affair with Tony Blair’s New Labour). What Murdoch’s newspapers and Trump’s pre-election rants did was something which conservatives have always done, stoke anti immigration hysteria to serve as a smokescreen for a power grab by old or new elites. When taken to an extreme, such scaremongering ends up boosting the far right. 

What is happening in the US now looks more like power grab by the unshackled super rich than a peasant rebellion. Not only has it elevated a property tycoon with a long history of tax avoidance to the presidency following a divisive campaign in which he stoked the flames of bigotry and sexism, but the new President has proceeded to appoint Wayne Tillerson, the chief executive of Exxon as his secretary of state, and Scott Pruitt, attorney general of the oil and gas-intensive state of Oklahoma, to head the Environmental Protection Agency. Pruitt has spent much of his energy as attorney general fighting the very agency he is being nominated to lead.

Farage may be out of the picture, having resigned from his party basking in the glory of victory, but his victory has boosted the Tory Party’s hold on British society. Freed from the shackles of Europe, post Brexit Britain may well gravitate towards a more authoritarian Asian model of capitalism. For it is extremely unlikely that the EU will reward Britain by granting it access to the single market while renouncing free movement. This may well push the UK to a race to the bottom when it comes to regulation, in a bid to boost its dull post Brexit fortunes.

Hardly revolutionary stuff.  Both Trump and Brexit have simply followed a long tried and tested script; that of reactionary elites winning support among the lower class by appealing to the lowest denominator of racism and bigotry. We often tend to forget that both Hitler and Mussolini were actively backed by capitalists and landowners. Farage’s breaking point poster – depicting a line of desperate refugees trying to reach Europe – epitomized the climate of fear which propelled Brexit and Trump in communities which have taken the brunt of globalization and the decrease in public spending. 

Notable prior exchanges between the two folk hereos consisted in Trump reportedly lobbying Farage to oppose windfarms next to his golf course in Scotland. Perhaps it is the new way of doing politics, where leaders help each other out in their private affairs.  Perhaps this is where Vladimir Putin comes in the picture as the Russian godfather of the far right international.

The Putin international

Trump and Farage are also united by admiration of Russian President Vladimir Putin, an authoritarian despot who actively supports anyone keen on destabilising western liberal democracies and the European project in particular.  

For the brand new world may well be characterized by great power diplomacy, of leaders who rely on court and palace diplomacy rather than on multilateral institutions like the EU or the UN. It may well be a world where divergent interests are resolved by restoring spheres of influence.  

Yet such a world would be endemically unstable. For while Trump may like Putin, he is at odds with China – which is geopolitically closer to Russia over trade and Taiwan. Trump has also promised to scrap the sanctions deal with Iran – another key Russian ally – and a vital lifeline for the Assad regime in Syria. Any right wing international is bound to fracture into competing national interests where the only antidote (or path) to war will be the chemistry between individual strong men.

Moreover suggestions that Russia might have intervened in the US elections by hacking accounts of Democratic party officials, puts pressure on Trump to prove himself as a defender of his own country’s interests, especially when these come in conflict with Russia’s. A foretaste of things to come is the turbulent relationship between Turkey’s Erdogan and Russia’s Putin – two autocrats who may be friendly at times while coming close to war in the Syrian quagmire.

The recent assassination of the Russian ambassador in Ankara is a case in point.  Tensions may even flare closer to home. It remains to be seen whether Trump will renege on NATO commitments, giving Putin a freehand to destabilize the Baltic States, who as EU members will rightfully expect fellow members to step in if Trump looks the other way.

Bring on the apocalypse

The truck used in the Berlin Christmas market attack, where the car-jacked truck ploughed into dozens of market-goers

It is also clear that the strategy of Islamic terrorists is to strike at the heart of tolerant European cities like Berlin with the sole aim of stoking a radical Islamophobic reaction. The sight of Germans welcoming refugees from Syria was a major cultural defeat for Isis. Attacks on the eve of elections in France and Germany may well be aimed at securing a victory for the radical right and create the right climate for the apocalypse which radical Islamists yearn for.

Crucially one major test to Trump’s foreign policy would be his reaction to a terrorist attack on American soil. For while like George W. Bush Trump was elected on a platform of withdrawal from the world stage, Trump who also hyped xenophobic Islamophobia may well over-react. If Isis wants an apocalypse it clearly knows what it has to do to get the reaction it wants.

A Kodak in a world of Instagram

And where does this leave the opposition to Brexit, Trump and the transatlantic hard right? Both the Democratic Party in the US and the Labour Party in the UK are at a loss.

For while Clinton’s moderate brand left many underprivileged voters cold, offering nothing but a continuation of policies which contributed to rising inequalities, in the UK Corbyn’s party seems condemned to folkloristic irrelevance, torn between the expectations of cosmopolitan remain voters and insular leave voters.  

Nothing could symbolize the quandary facing Labour than Jeremy Corbyn’s weak performance in the referendum (where he only sounded passionate defending freedom of movement, the very thing which irked leavers in his party) and his subsequent triumph in a leadership of a party which has become allergic to Tony Blair’s toxic legacy.

Bernie Sanders’s – a self declared socialist – unexpected strong challenge to Clinton fits the pattern; a rejection of third-way politics by elder politicians whose movements have yet to come up with a convincing alternative to neo liberalism. 

For in the UK Labour seems to have lost the ability to communicate outside its ideological bubble. And even that bubble seems to be imploding, with leftists like Peter Tatchell and Owen Jones openly questioning Corbyn’s timid stance on the Russian bombardment of Aleppo. Trapped in a frozen cold war “anti imperialism” leaders like Corbyn have no clue on how to deal with an aggressive imperialist Russia. 

Europe’s far-right: Italy’s Lega Nord leader Matteo Salvini, France’s Front National leader Marine Le Pen, the Netherlands’ Party for Freedom leader Geert Wilders

In this sense Justin Trudeau’s triumph in Canada’s election on an inclusive and liberal platform coupled with a promise of a stimulus plan which defies the logic of austerity, stands as an interesting exception to global trends even if it may be too early in the day to judge his economic performance.

Across the channel the left risks not even making it to a second round where the staunchly conservative Fillon is expected to be the rival of Marine Le Pen. Split between the law and order message of Manuel Valls, the radical centrism of Emmanuel Macron and the far left Jean-Luc Melenchon, the French left seems heading to irrelevance. Further south Matteo Renzi may have given Beppe Grillo a golden opportunity after doing a David Cameron; gambling his personal future on a referendum which saw the electorate rejecting his constitutional offer by a 60% margin. Of the current crop of centrist leaders it is Angela Merkel, who may survive as the leader of another grand coalition in Germany (or in alliance with Liberals or Greens).  

This for the simple reason that the socialists are making no inroads while the right wing Alternative for Germany can’t possibly win. What is sure is that the left has been discredited for lurching too much to the right in the past 25 years but becomes a caricature of its own self when it presents itself as a fading Kodak image of its glorious years in a world of Instagram.