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      After Brexit and Trump, rightwing populists cling to power – but the truth is they can’t govern | Jonathan Freedland

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      After Brexit and Trump, rightwing populists cling to power – but the truth is they can’t governJonathan FreedlandThe farcical scenes among US Republicans have echoes in our Tory party. Both promise disruption, then deliver exactly that The US right has this week been staging a clown show that has had liberals in that country and beyond pulling up a chair and breaking out the popcorn. There has been a karmic pleasure in watching the Republicans who won control of the House of Representatives struggle to complete the most basic piece of business – the election of a speaker – but it’s also been instructive, and not only to Americans. For it has confirmed the dirty little secret of that strain of rightwing populist politics that revels in what it calls disruption: it always ends in bitter factional fighting, chaos and paralysis. We in Britain should know, because Brexit has gone the exact same way.Start with the karma that saw House Republicans gather two years to the day since they sought to prevent the peaceful transfer of power from one party to another: often overlooked in the anniversary recollections of 6 January 2021 is that, mere hours after rioters had stormed the US Capitol, a majority of Republican House members voted to do precisely as the rioters had demanded and overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Yet here were those same House Republicans on 6 January 2023, having prevented the smooth transfer of power from one party to another – except this time, the party they were thwarting was their own.House still without speaker as McCarthy pleads with Republican holdouts – liveRead moreIt should have been straightforward. Republicans won a narrow majority in the House in November, which gave them the right to put one of their number in the speaker’s chair. The trouble was, while most backed Kevin McCarthy, about 20 rebels did not. By Thursday night, they had gone through 11 rounds of voting – the most since the civil war era – without McCarthy or anyone else winning a majority. The result: deadlock.It was a study in incompetence. A party asks the electorate to give them power; they get it and then freeze, unable to take even the first step towards using it. There’s no clear political logic to the stalemate. The rebels are devotees of Donald Trump, but McCarthy himself is a tireless Trump sycophant – patronised by the former president as “my Kevin” – who begged for and won the backing of the orange one. The pro-Trump rebels are divided among themselves: one rebuked Trump for sticking with McCarthy, while another voted to make Trump himself speaker.It’s telling that the rebels’ demands are not on policy but on procedure, seeking rule changes or committee seats that would give them more power. Otherwise, they can’t really say what they want. They succeeded in getting metal detectors removed from the entrance to the chamber, so now people can walk on to the floor of the House carrying a gun, but apart from that, and their hunger to start investigating Democrats, including Joe Biden’s son Hunter, nothing.All this has significance for the year ahead in US politics. For one thing, it’s yet more evidence of the diminishing strength of Trump among Republican leaders, if not yet among the party faithful. For another, if Republicans cannot make a relatively easy decision like this one, how are they going to make the tough but necessary choices that are coming – such as authorising the spending, and debt, required to keep the US government functioning?But its meaning goes far wider. For what’s been on display this week, in especially florid form, is a strain of politics that has infected many democracies, including our own. Its key feature is its delight in disruption, in promising to upend the system. That was the thrust of the twin movements of 2016, Trump and Brexit. Both promised to sweep away the elites, the experts, the orthodoxy – whether in Washington DC or Brussels. They were new movements, but they were drawing on deep roots. Four decades ago both Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher cast themselves as radicals daring to shake off the dead hand of the government.So we can hardly be surprised that those who railed against government should be so bad at it. They promised disruption, and that’s what they’ve delivered. In the US it was the chaos of Trump himself, and now a House of mini-Trumps that can’t tie its own shoelaces. In the UK, it looks different: we have a prime minister in Rishi Sunak whose pitch is technocratic competence. But that should not conceal two things.First, the post-2016 Tory party delivered just as much parliamentary turmoil and intra-party division as McCarthy and co served up this week. Whether it was the Commons gridlock of the two years preceding the 2019 election or the psychodrama of the three years after it, Brexit-era Conservatism has proved every bit as unhinged as Trump-era Republicanism. When it comes to burn-it-all-down politics, the Republicans’ craziest wing are mere novices compared with a master arsonist such as Liz Truss. The US and UK are simply at different points in the cycle.House Democrats should unite with moderate Republicans to elect a speaker | Robert ReichRead moreSecond, even with Sunak in charge, and though painted in less vivid colours, Brexit-era Toryism is just as paralysed as its sister movement in the US. The five-point plan unveiled in the PM’s new year address consisted mostly of the basics of state administration – growing the economy, managing inflation – rather than anything amounting to a political programme.And that’s chiefly because his party, like the Republicans, cannot agree among themselves. Consider how much Sunak has had to drop, under pressure from assorted rebels. Whether it was reform of the planning system, the manifesto commitment to build 300,000 new houses a year or the perennial pledge to grasp the nettle of social care, Sunak has had to back away from tasks that are essential for the wellbeing of the country. True, he has avoided the farcical scenes that played out this week on Capitol Hill, but that’s only because he has preferred to preserve the veneer of unity than to force a whole slew of issues. The result is a prime minister who cannot propose much more than extra maths lessons lest he lose the fractious, restive coalition that keeps him in office.None of this is coincidence. It’s in the nature of the rightwing populist project, in Britain, the US and across the globe. Brexit is the exemplar, a mission that worked with great potency as a campaign, as a slogan, but which could never translate into governing, because it was never about governing. It was about disrupting life, not organising it – or even acknowledging the trade-offs required to organise it. It offered the poetry of destruction, not the prose of competence.The Conservatives are several stages further down this road than the Republicans, perhaps because their power has been uninterrupted throughout. But in both cases, and others, the shift is unmistakable. Once parties of the right saw themselves as the obvious custodians of state authority: the natural party of government. Now they are happier shaking their fists at those they insist are really in charge. They are becoming the natural party of opposition. Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist
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      TopicsUS politicsOpinionRepublicansDonald TrumpBrexitConservativesRishi SunakEuropean UnioncommentReuse this content More

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      A Book on Brexit Shakes Confidence in the Labour Party

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      The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More

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      Ditching the Northern Ireland Protocol is unConservative and May Break the UK

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      The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More

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      From the archive: Welcome to the age of Trump

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      We are raiding the Audio Long Read archives to bring you some classic pieces from years past, with new introductions from the authors.
      This week, from 2016: Whether he wins the US presidency or not, his rise reveals a growing attraction to political demagogues – and points to a wider crisis of democracy

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      Expert panel explore the government’s pursuit of Brexit opportunities

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      Panellists struggled to identify major benefits of Brexit at an event hosted by The Independent on Wednesday evening.The discussion was chaired by chief political commentator John Rentoul – who put questions from the audience about how Britain was dealing with the exit from the bloc.Anand Menon, the director of think-tank The UK in a Changing Europe, reminded the audience that had Brexit not happened then David Cameron would have remained prime minister.He said Brexit had at least aligned the UK’s political conversation to “left behind” areas and that he doubted this would have happened to the same extent otherwise – one potential bright side.And he went on to argue that he did not think a country the size of the UK would suit an arrangement like the European Economic Area – where it would be a rule-taker and have less say over its governance arrangements.Naomi Smith, the chief executive of internationalist and pro-EU campaign group Best for Britain, said Northern Ireland could have been one of the few places that made a success of Brexit because of its special arrangement giving access to both the EU and UK markets.But this opportunity had been squandered by wrangling over the Northern Ireland protocol, she said, with businesses concerned about how durable the settlement was.Jon Stone, The Independent’s policy correspondent, noted that some of then problems of Brexit were specific to the politics of the Conservative party.He argued that any other party would have been able to easily solve the situation of Northern Ireland – but that the Tories were ideologically and politically committed to avoiding obvious solutions like aligning with EU rules.Stone also stated that it was hard to predict whether the UK would rejoin the EU or move to a closer relationship in the coming decades, claiming there were “too many variables”.Exploring the government’s pursuit of Brexit opportunitiesWatch back the full discussion – Exploring the government’s pursuit of Brexit opportunities – in the video above. More

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      US ‘will not entertain’ UK trade deal that risks Good Friday agreement

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      US ‘will not entertain’ UK trade deal that risks Good Friday agreement US congressman Richard Neal says peace deal must not be held ‘hostage over domestic politics’ A bilateral trade deal between the US and the UK is “desirable” but will not progress while the Northern Ireland peace deal is being used for domestic political purposes, one of the most powerful American congressmen has warned.Richard Neal, the chairman of the ways and means committee, has told the Guardian: “We will not entertain a trade agreement if there is any jeopardy to the Good Friday agreement.TopicsNorthern IrelandBrexitEuropeIrelandForeign policyEuropean UnionUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      The BBC’s flat Earth policy should be roundly condemned | Letters

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      The BBC’s flat Earth policy should be roundly condemnedHelen Johnson, Bob Ward, Dr Richard Milne and Piers Burnett on the BBC’s director of editorial policy and his pursuit of impartiality It’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry at the BBC’s latest pronouncement rejecting cancel culture, when the example given is the willingness to give a fair hearing to flat-Earthers (BBC does not subscribe to ‘cancel culture’, says director of editorial policy, 11 January). It’s nothing new for the BBC to give a platform to fantasists, of course; but there did seem to be an acknowledgment post-Brexit that it had perhaps been wrong to give equal weighting to fact and delusion. And there must be someone at the national broadcaster who regrets affording quite so many opportunities to Nigel Lawson to deny climate change reality on the airwaves.Which other minority beliefs can we now expect to be expounded in the 8.10am interview on the Today programme? It’s surely time we looked seriously at the view that the Covid vaccine is connecting us to a vast AI network, and that upstate New York was once inhabited by giants. There are also apparently people who still believe that Boris Johnson is a great prime minister, though finding a government minister to represent that view this week may be beyond even the bending-over-backwards, non-cancelling capacity of the BBC.Helen JohnsonSedbergh, Cumbria It was disappointing to read that David Jordan, the BBC’s director of editorial policy, told a House of Lords committee that “if a lot of people believed in flat Earth we’d need to address it more” in order to ensure impartiality. He appears to have forgotten that the BBC’s editorial guidelines also state that the broadcaster is “committed to achieving due accuracy in all its output”. Or perhaps he is genuinely unaware that for the past couple of millennia the shape of the Earth has not been just a matter of opinion, but instead has been established as a verifiable scientific fact.Either way, let us hope that the BBC’s new action plan on impartiality and editorial standards does not lead the broadcaster to promote more of the daft and dangerous views of those who believe that Covid-19 vaccines do not work or greenhouse gas emissions are not heating Earth.Bob WardPolicy and communications director, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment The BBC’s stated policy to “represent all points of view” is worrying on two levels. First, where does the policy stop? There are people out there who think the value of a person depends upon their gender or skin tone – should those views be represented? What about Holocaust deniers? And those who think homosexuality, or marrying the wrong person, should be punished by death?Second, one of the BBC’s worst failures this century has been to present ill-informed opinion as being equal in value to professional expertise – most notably on climate change. At the absolute minimum, it needs to make crystal clear who is and who is not an expert. A lot of misinformation originates from well-funded pressure groups, which need no help getting their message across. So if we must hear ill-informed opinions, let it be from a person on the street – then at least the defence of representing public opinion would have some merit.Dr Richard MilneEdinburgh According to your report, David Jordan, the BBC’s director of editorial policy, told a Lords committee that the corporation does not subscribe to “cancel culture” and that everyone should have their views represented by the BBC, even if they believe Earth is flat, adding that “flat-Earthers are not going to get as much space as people who believe the Earth is round … And if a lot of people believed in flat Earth we’d need to address it more.”I understand that many Americans fervently believe in the QAnon conspiracy theory and most of the Republican party believes that Donald Trump won the last presidential election – and here in the UK there are substantial numbers of anti-vaxxers. I assume that Mr Jordan will now ensure that the views of these groups are given airtime on the BBC’s channels commensurate with their numbers.In fact, it appears that Mr Jordan has no genuine editorial policy – which would require him to make judgments based on facts and values – only a desperate anxiety to appease the cultural warriors on the right of the Conservative party.Piers BurnettSinnington, North YorkshireTopicsBBCHouse of LordsConservativesClimate crisisCoronavirusBrexitQAnonlettersReuse this content More

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      The Value of EU Citizenship in a Post-Brexit World

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      In the 1980s, I was born having freedom of movement across Europe, when Britain was part of the European Economic Community. The concept of EU citizenship was formally established in 1993, as part of the creation of the European Union itself, under the Maastricht Treaty.

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      Freedom of movement in Europe was always something I took for granted. I saw Europe as part of our heritage, despite the grumblings of euroskeptics and sly articles in the British press about the perils of straight bananas and the metric system. 

      I traveled a lot in my youth, but travel was never really the issue. Citizens of many countries from outside the EU can stay in the Schengen zone for up to 90 days without a visa. It wasn’t until 2009 that the benefits of being an EU citizen became obvious to me. 

      Free to Work and Study in Europe 

      I signed up for a master’s degree in Brussels, Belgium. The beauty of this was, as an EU citizen, the entire degree cost me only €500 ($560). It was taught in English and full of students from all over the world.

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      There was no paperwork to deal with, no need to prove income, no need to apply for any student visas. Education in Belgium was as open to me as education in my country of origin. And that would have been the same for education in any country in the EU. 

      I stayed in Belgium for two years. During that time, I could work freely without any authorization. I taught English at the European Parliament. I also did a number of freelance jobs on the side. But I could have worked anywhere, from behind a bar, to the top levels of the European institutions. 

      As an EU citizen, I had the right to live and work in Belgium, just as I did with any other country in the EU and the European Economic Area (EEA). No sponsorship needed, no work visa, no permission of any kind. 

      I often traveled back and forth between London and Brussels. The Eurostar was, and still is, the best mode of transport. It takes you directly from the center of one capital into the center of the other. With an EU passport, going through immigration was quick and simple. In contrast, passport holders from outside the EU had to wait in a separate queue, all herded together. 

      I didn’t use my EU freedom of movement rights again for 10 years. But that would be for the final time, as a big change was coming. 

      The Vote That Changed Everything

      In 2016, a majority of British voters decided the UK should leave the European Union. Millions of British citizens would soon lose their EU rights. People with Irish or other European relatives were desperately applying for second passports.

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      The next few years were chaotic, full of political turmoil and tribalism. The Brexit referendum had split the country down the middle, and things would never be the same again.

      After the vote, there was a rapidly closing window of opportunity to move to the EU. I knew that was the only option for me. So, in the early weeks of 2020, I moved to Lisbon, the capital of Portugal. Time was running out by then, with the Brexit transition period in full swing. Within months, UK citizens would be officially relegated to third-country national status. 

      There was no time to waste in securing residency in Portugal. As an EU citizen, it was easy. I landed in Lisbon, took my passport and showed up at the nearest municipal office. Thirty minutes and €15 later, I had a five-year temporary residency document for Portugal. 

      Portugal’s citizenship timeline is five years. All being well, that document will allow me to regain my EU rights sometime in 2025, this time as a proud citizen of Portugal — the country I chose.  

      The EU project is far from perfect. Like any large-scale collaboration of humans, it’s fraught with issues. Yes, there’s corruption. Yes, there’s waste and inefficiency. Despite that, the EU is an ambitious project that emerged out of the devastation of the Second World War. The resulting economic cooperation has kept Europe peaceful ever since. In that sense, it’s doing exactly what it was designed to do.

      Citizen of Another Somewhere

      I don’t like nationalism. It’s too easily misused. And I can’t be proud of something that I didn’t achieve: the coincidence of being born on a certain piece of land. Does that mindset make me a “citizen of nowhere”? If so, that’s good. Thanks for the compliment, Theresa. 

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      As the late John le Carre once said, “If you want to make me a citizen of nowhere, I will become a citizen of another somewhere.” An Englishman all his life, le Carre died an Irish citizen, so disappointed was he at the fallout from Brexit. He was fortunate to have that Irish heritage. Not everyone does. And those that don’t have become second-class citizens in Europe.

      National pride is artificially constructed to hold the nation-state together. It plays on our natural inclinations toward tribalism, which is merely an evolutionary hangover. Benedict Anderson’s classic book, “Imagined Communities,” explains these ideas better than I ever could.

      Perhaps the EU is an “imagined community” too. But countries working together, no matter how flawed the process, is the only route we have to improving the world. It’s a project I’m determined to be part of. And if I can’t do so as a British citizen, then I’ll happily do so as a Portuguese. 

      *[Samantha North is the founder of Digital Émigré, an EU citizenship consultancy.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More