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      in US Politics

      'Kind of unbelievable': US Republicans in Britain mull over Trump impact

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      Watching history unfold in Washington DC from her home in London, Jan Halper-Hayes admitted to being slightly incredulous about the images of Donald Trump supporters storming the US Capitol.“It was kind of in some ways unbelievable,” says the long-term activist in the Republican party and former vice-president of its UK branch. She claims she has received “good information” to indicate that “Antifa people” were present at the riot.The unsubstantiated claim that Antifa – a catch-all term used by the president and others to describe anti-Trump protest movements – had infiltrated the mob is one that some of his most die-hard supporters have clung to.That the idea has made the leap across the Atlantic underlines how the Republican diaspora have not been immune to some of the bitter controversies splitting the party in its homeland.In the UK, the Trump presidency has taken something of a toll on the local branch of Republicans Overseas, which largely operates as a social circle for expatriate supporters who organise a 4th July party each year and carry out voter registration.Some members, and particularly young women, previously involved with the group have stepped away since the president’s 2016 election and, in some cases, even voted for Joe Biden. Halper-Hayes, a former member of Trump’s White House transition team and visitor to his Mar-a-Lago resort, remains loyal nevertheless, insisting that it has never been hard to square support for Trump with traditional Republican values.“I knew him when I lived in New York, so I have known him through all his iterations. I was on his transition team, and from encounters and observations I can tell you that he is so friendly and funny. It’s a shame that he used Twitter for a nasty side because that’s not who he really is.“Whether I am in an Uber car or in a supermarket, people love Trump here in the UK. It’s the BBC and the Guardian that take on a different mainstream media narrative.”Molly Kiniry has a very different take on Trump. She watched his rise both within the party and in national US politics with what she says was “increasing amounts of horror”. She views his most recent conduct as “a manifestation of the mental instability that has been there all along”.Not that being a Republican supporter in an often left-leaning city like London was ever without complexities. “What I normally say when people express surprise that I’m a Republican is something to the effect of ‘I am, I just hide the horns very well’.”Casting her US presidential vote for Joe Biden this time came easily, says Kiniry, a former spokesperson for Republicans Overseas UK and now a graduate student at Cambridge who acknowledges that the president and his loyalists would likely regard her as a Rino [Republican in name only].Like others, she says she is looking forward to her party regaining its traditional identity. She remains optimistic. “I don’t think I would still be a registered Republican after the last five or six years if that was not the case.”She is withering about those who have stood by the president in the US seat of power and, as a native Washingtonian, admits that the destructive events in DC had cut deep. “I think the members who did not vote to impeach the president will have to answer to voters, and to history as well, quite frankly.”A third view of sorts is espoused by Greg Swenson, a spokesperson for Republicans Overseas, who insists that Trump managed to win over him and others who had originally wanted someone else to be the party’s 2016 candidate. It was notable today that the majority of the UK branch’s board were women, he says. “I criticised him, but I can say that I have been very happy with what he did.”As an investment banker, he was attracted in particular to Trump’s stewardship of the US economy. “I became more of a supporter as we saw the results, for example, of tax deregulation, but it was also the massive pushback against him from Democrats and the left. As they became more unhinged, the more dug in Trump supporters have become.”That said, Swenson confesses that he is relishing a spell “in opposition” after four years defending a president who, he concedes, “finally overdid it”. He adds: “Trump fatigue is exhausting for every one, whether they are supporters or opponents – so I’m kind of looking forward to it.” More

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      in UK Politics

      Introduce two weeks’ paid bereavement leave, MPs tell ministers

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      Ministers are facing calls to introduce a minimum of two weeks’ paid bereavement leave following the death of a close relative or partner.
      A coalition of MPs, business chiefs and charities have called for the measure in the face of the mounting Covid-19 death toll.The government has so far been reluctant to introduce statutory bereavement leave.   More

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      in US Politics

      Trump's British cheerleaders are rushing to denounce him. It's too little, too late | Owen Jones

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      As smoke billowed out of the Capitol, some of Donald Trump’s US apologists – the appeasers, the opportunistic cheerleaders, even some true believers – suddenly discovered consciences. In Britain, rightwing commentators had even less reason to embrace the man who remains US president: domestic support for him here has always been negligible. Cheerleading for Trump in Britain has always been a conscious choice, and it is all the more striking because it comes without the excuse of external pressure or cynical self-interest: indeed, it carries the price of damaging the cheerleaders’ credibility even among many Conservative voters.Those who made that choice in Britain are now attempting to walk away whistling from the crime scene, but apologism for the figurehead of the international far right – including the self-confessed Nazis who stormed the US legislature – should come with accountability. Fraser Nelson is editor of the Spectator, which presents itself as a respectable centre-right publication – its summer party is attended by senior Tory and Labour figures and BBC journalists alike – even as it publishes columns bemoaning there is “not nearly enough Islamophobia within the Tory party”.Last week, Nelson joined the ranks of British conservatives abandoning their fallen hero, writing a column entitled “Trump’s final act was a betrayal of the people who voted for him” – itself a questionable claim, given one YouGov poll showed more Republican voters backed the storming of the Capitol than opposed it. It stands in stark contrast to another of his columns from three years ago, headlined “A new, more reasonable Donald Trump presidency might just be on the way”, endorsing suggestions the president would “gravitate to the middle”.The Spectator is chaired by former flagship BBC interviewer Andrew Neil, who can now be found beating his chest and declaring: “There is one name responsible for what is happening on Capitol Hill tonight and that name is TRUMP.” And yet no British publication gave such generous space to Trump and Trumpism as the Spectator, publishing articles with headlines such as “The intelligent case for voting Trump” and “Trump will be much, much better for Britain”, or crowing “Donald Trump’s victory marks the death of liberalism”. There is a broad consensus that what paved the way for Wednesday’s insurrection in Washington DC was the deliberate (and baseless) delegitimising of the presidential election, and in November, the Spectator was publishing articles such as “Trump is right not to concede” and “Can you really blame Trump for refusing to accept the election result?”The U-turns are suddenly coming thick and fast. Former Tory MEP Daniel Hannan often positions himself as a genteel rightwing Brexiteer: polite, well-read, thoughtful, eschewing demagoguery. This weekend, he did not hold back, penning a fiery polemic entitled: “Donald Trump is guilty of treason: political violence in a democracy is never justifiable”. Let’s reflect, then, on another of his pieces, written less than four months ago, headlined: “Trump’s flaws are many, but he’d be better for Britain than Biden”. Hannan also repeated the phoney narrative that it was a uniquely violent left who were the real threat. “God knows I’m no fan of Trump,” he tweeted the day before the election, “but is it really disgruntled Republicans that people are boarding up their shops against?”Hannan has been joined by Douglas Murray, one of the most successful rightwing authors of our age, who once demanded that “conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board”, denounced Muslims as a “demographic timebomb” and suggested London had become a foreign country because in 23 out of its 33 boroughs, “‘white Britons’ are now in a minority”. Murray, too, pointed to the boarding up of Washington DC as Americans voted. “Doubtless Democrats will blame Republicans and lazy media will blame all sides,” he solemnly predicted, “but this town is not bracing for disgruntled Trump-ists to smash it up.” In a Telegraph column in August headlined “It’s in the UK’s national interest for Trump to triumph”, Murray accepted the president had flaws – among which he included boastfulness and “devotion to exaggeration”, but, oddly, not Islamophobia, racism or describing neo-Nazis as “very fine people”. Casually discarding the man he lauded, Murray now gravely intones: “Only Trump is to blame for the Capitol chaos”.For so long, Trump’s opponents have been accused of hysteria, of exaggeration, even of “Trump derangement syndrome”. But when we organised mass protests against him, we did so because we recognised Trump represented a serious incipient fascist threat. For British rightwingers who denied or downplayed that threat, it was always clear that while they might regard him as vulgar – or felt polite society compelled them to say so – they had rather a lot of sympathy for his political platform. With Trump finally going, Trumpism will not suddenly vanish, across the Atlantic: but as these receipts show, nor will it do so here. More

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      in UK Politics

      Inside Politics: All adults vaccinated by autumn, says Matt Hancock

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      As if we didn’t have enough to worry about. Kim Jong-un has vowed to expand North Korea’s nuclear weapons capacity, as he appeared to break down and cry during a public performance. Our health secretary Matt Hancock knows a bit about that – crying in public (not the nuclear weapons stuff). Thankfully, Hancock has vowed to expand the UK’s vaccine capacity, and is all set to reveal how every adult will get the jab by autumn.Inside the bubblePolitical editor Andrew Woodcock on what to look out for on Monday: More

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      in US Politics

      21 things to look forward to in 2021 – from meteor showers to the Olympics

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      From finally seeing the back of Donald Trump to being in a football stadium – the new year is full of promiseYou probably found a few things to enjoy about last year: you rediscovered your bicycle, perhaps, or your family, or even both, and learned to love trees. And don’t forget the clapping. Plus some brilliant scientists figured out how to make a safe and effective vaccine for a brand new virus in record time. Continue reading… More

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      in Elections

      Official plane used by Trump will fly to Scotland just before Biden inauguration – report

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      The murk surrounding Donald Trump’s likely whereabouts on his last day as president has thickened considerably with news that an official plane he has used in the past is due to fly to Scotland the day before Joe Biden’s inauguration.Trump himself is sticking to his refusal to accept his decisive electoral defeat. He has been caught cajoling election officials to “find” thousands of extra votes and is encouraging his supporters to gather for a “wild” day of protest on Wednesday when Congress is due to ratify the result.The White House has refused to say what he will do when Biden is inaugurated on 20 January, raising the question of whether Trump will even leave the building voluntarily.Most Trump-watchers expect him to dodge any event that would involve acknowledging his election loss. They predict he will stage a spectacular diversion to detract from Biden’s first day on the job.Many versions of that scenario have the outgoing president flying to his private club in Florida, Mar-a-Lago. But Scotland’s Sunday Post has reported that Prestwick airport, near Trump’s Turnberry golf course resort, has been told to expect a US military Boeing 757 that has occasionally been used by Trump, on 19 January.The report said that speculation over a possible inauguration day drama has been fuelled by sightings of US military surveillance aircraft circling Turnberry for a week in November, doing possible advance work.“It is usually a sign Trump is going to be somewhere for an extended period,” the Post quoted an unnamed source as saying.The 757 is a smaller, narrower plane than the Boeing 747-200Bs that are normally designated Air Force One. It is more often used by the vice-president and first lady, Melania Trump, than the president.There was no immediate response to requests for comment from the White House or Prestwick airport. Leaving the country before formally leaving office would be unprecedented for a US president.Flying to Scotland before 20 January would be a way to get US taxpayers to pay for the first leg of a post-presidential holiday. It is also possible the flight was booked as a contingency by a candidate surprised by defeat and unsure what to do.Multiple reports suggest he will face severe difficulties in his heavily indebted business empire.New accounts published on Monday showed Trump’s array of golf properties in Scotland lost £3.4m in 2019, though Trump Turnberry showed a modest profit.Meanwhile his neighbours at Mar-a-Lago have launched a legal effort to stop him moving there full-time, saying he is precluded by an agreement he signed in the early 1990s converting the estate from a private residence to a club.Wherever Trump goes on 20 January, it is unlikely the exit will be quiet or particularly dignified. But it will be unlike any presidential departure the country has ever witnessed. More

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      in US Politics

      All I want for 2021 is to see Mark Zuckerberg up in court | John Naughton

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      It’s always risky making predictions about the tech industry, but this year looks like being different, at least in the sense that there are two safe bets. One is that the attempts to regulate the tech giants that began last year will intensify; the second that we will be increasingly deluged by sanctimonious cant from Facebook & co as they seek to avoid democratic curbing of their unaccountable power.On the regulation front, last year in the US, Alphabet, Google’s corporate owner, found itself facing major antitrust suits from 38 states as well as from the Department of Justice. On this side of the pond, there are preparations for a Digital Markets Unit with statutory powers that will be able to neatly sidestep the tricky definitional questions of what constitutes a monopoly in a digital age. Instead, the unit will decide on a case-by-case basis whether a particular tech company has “strategic market status” if it possesses “substantial, entrenched market power in at least one digital activity” or if it acts as an online “gateway” for other businesses. And if a company is judged to have this status, then penalties and regulations will be imposed on it.Over in Brussels, the European Union has come up with a new two-pronged legal framework for curbing digital power – the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act. The Digital Markets Act is aimed at curbing anti-competitive practices in the tech industry (like buying up potential competitors before they can scale up) and will include fines of 10% of global revenues for infringers. The Digital Services Act, for its part, will oblige social media platforms to take more responsibility for illegal content on their platforms – scams, terrorist content, images of abuse, etc – for which they could face fines of up to 6% of global revenue if they fail to police content adequately. So the US and UK approach focuses on corporate behaviour; the EU approach focuses on defining what is allowed legally.All of this action has been a long time coming and while it’s difficult to say exactly how it will play out, the bottom line is that the tech industry is – finally – going to become a regulated one. Its law-free bonanza is going to come to an end.Joe Biden’s choices for top staff in his administration include a depressing proportion of former tech company stalwartsThe big question, though, is: when? Antitrust actions proceed at a glacial pace because of the complexity of the issues and the bottomless legal budgets of the companies involved. The judge in one of the big American antitrust cases against Google has said that he expects the case to get to court only in late 2023 and then it could run for several years (as the Microsoft case did in the 1990s).The problem with that, as the veteran anti-monopoly campaigner Matt Stoller has pointed out, is that the longer monopolistic behaviour goes on, the more damage (eg, to advertisers whose revenue is being stolen and other businesses whose property is being appropriated) is being done. Google had $170bn in revenue last year and is growing on average at 10-20% a year. On a conservative estimate of 10% growth, the company will add another $100bn to its revenue by 2025, when the case will still be in the court. Facebook, says Stoller, “is at $80bn of revenue this year, but it is growing faster, so the net increase of revenue is a roughly similar amount. In other words, if the claims of the government are credible, then the lengthy case, while perhaps necessary, is also enabling these monopolists to steal an additional $100bn apiece.”What could speed up bringing these monopolists to account? A key factor is the vigour with which the US Department of Justice prosecutes its case(s). In the run-up to the 2020 election, the Democrats in Congress displayed an encouraging enthusiasm for tackling tech monopolies, but Joe Biden’s choices for top staff in his administration include a depressing proportion of former tech company stalwarts. And his vice-president-elect, Kamala Harris, consistently turned a blind eye to the anti-competitive acquisitions of the Silicon Valley giants throughout her time as California’s attorney general. So if people are hoping for antitrust zeal from the new US government, they may be in for disappointment.Interestingly, Stoller suggests that another approach (inspired by the way trust-busters in the US acted in the 1930s) could have useful leverage on corporate behaviour from now on. Monopolisation isn’t just illegal, he points out, “it is in fact a crime, an appropriation of the rights and property of others by a dominant actor. The lengthy trial is essentially akin to saying that bank robbers getting to keep robbing banks until they are convicted and can probably keep the additional loot.”Since a basic principle of the rule of law is that crime shouldn’t pay, an addition of the possibility of criminal charges to the antitrust actions might, like the prospect of being hanged in the morning (pace Dr Johnson), concentrate minds in Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple. As an eternal optimist, I cannot think of a nicer prospect for 2021 than the sight of Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai in the dock – with Nick Clegg in attendance, taking notes. Happy new year!What I’ve been readingWho knew?What We Want Doesn’t Always Make Us Happy is a great Bloomberg column by Noah Smith.Far outIntriguing piece on how investors are using real-time satellite images to predict retailers’ sales (Stock Picks From Space), by Frank Partnoy on the Atlantic website.An American dream Lovely meditation on Nora Ephron’s New York, by Carrie Courogen on the Bright Wall/Dark Room website. More

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      in US Politics

      The Guardian view on liberal Christians: is this their moment? | Editorial

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      “No one is saved alone,” writes Pope Francis in Let Us Dream, a short book of Covid-related reflections published last month. Those words carry an obvious Christian resonance. But the meaning that the pope intends to convey is primarily secular. The pandemic, he believes, has underlined our shared vulnerability and mutual dependency. By shocking us out of everyday indifference and egotism, our present troubles can open up the space for a new spirit of fraternity. A fresh emphasis on looking out for each other, claims the pope, can become the theme of a more generous and caring post-pandemic politics.Let Us Dream is a pastoral, spiritual book that aspires to address a lay audience as well as a religious one. In its emphasis on civic solidarity, tolerance, concern for the poor and the environment, it is also the latest attempt by Pope Francis to shift the dial of 21st-century Christianity away from the culture wars that have consumed it.There is an obvious temptation to respond wryly: “Good luck with that.” In a number of high-profile ways, 2020 was another depressing year for liberal-minded Christians. The Polish Catholic church worked hand in glove with the state in an attempt to effectively ban abortion and trample over LGBTQ+ rights. The strong disapproval of a majority of Poles, who have no wish to live in a theocracy, cut no ice. In neighbouring Hungary, the Reformed, Lutheran and Catholic churches kept stumm as Viktor Orbán’s government continued to bully minorities in the name of “illiberal Christianity”. During the lead-up to November’s US presidential election, Donald Trump’s cynical weaponisation of the abortion debate helped ensure strong Christian backing for the most profane, religiously illiterate president in the country’s history. And this week, Pope Francis himself indicated his disapproval of the legalisation of abortion in his native Argentina.But this stark summary of the church at odds with the liberal world does not tell the whole story. In Britain, as elsewhere, Christian churches, alongside mosques and synagogues, played a frontline role in the community activism that kept people and families afloat during months of acute uncertainty and hardship. It is from that wellspring of fellow feeling and altruism, the importance of which is suddenly front and centre in our lives, that Let Us Dream believes a “new humanism” can emerge. For those who share that aspiration, whether secular or religious, there are genuine grounds for hope in 2021.A liberal CatholicThe election to the White House of Joe Biden, a Democrat who is also a practising Catholic, is the best news liberal Christians have had for a long time. In a book published last month, the conservative Australian cardinal George Pell said Mr Trump was “a bit of a barbarian, but in some important ways he’s ‘our’ (Christian) barbarian”. The end of that cynically transactional relationship between Mr Trump’s White House and the religious right signals new possibilities. In his victory speech, Mr Biden quoted from Ecclesiastes, saying that for a divided America, “it was a time to heal”. When he has discussed his faith, the president-elect has tended to talk about altruism, decency and personal integrity, steering clear of provocative dividing lines.Mr Biden has backed access to abortion and same-sex marriage. He will, as a result, be relentlessly targeted by conservative Catholic critics and evangelicals. The president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, José Gomez, has convened a working group to address the “difficult and complex” situation of dealing with a liberal Catholic in the White House. But the Catholic vote was split evenly between Mr Biden and Mr Trump. And, crucially, Pope Francis is likely to have the new president’s back.This relationship could constitute an important new axis of liberal influence in the west. After a recent phone call between the two, a statement from Mr Biden’s transition team said the president-elect “expressed his desire to work together on the basis of a shared belief in the dignity and equality of all humankind, on issues such as caring for the marginalised and the poor, addressing the crisis of climate change and welcoming and integrating immigrants and refugees into our communities”. This was to more or less tick off the list of priorities the pope has attempted to set, while under constant assault from religious conservatives. The disruption of the recent alliance between Christianity and rightwing populism carries significant implications not only for America, but for the battle against global poverty, the climate emergency and the migration crisis.Fraternity as the new frontierMr Biden’s election is not the only hopeful sign for Christians who long for their leaders to look beyond the narrow preoccupation with reproductive rights and sexuality. Last year was marked by two significant theological documents, one from the eastern church and one from the west. Towards a Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church, published during Lent, is a radical clarion call for Orthodox Christians to engage with deepening inequalities in developed societies, and to confront wealthy nations with their moral obligations to refugees. The tone is set by the opening words of the text: “Our spiritual lives … cannot fail to be social lives.” Endorsed by Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of the Orthodox church, the document recalls that “[the] early and Byzantine church had a bold voice on social justice”. This, it states, must be revived and renewed. Pope Francis’s recent encyclical, Fratelli Tutti (Brothers All), was written in the same spirit. Ideas of fraternity and friendship are developed as a necessary complement to the familiar political categories of liberty and equality. The argument is summed up in Let Us Dream, where the pope writes: “Without the ‘we’ of a people, of a family, of institutions, of a society that transcends the ‘I’ of individual interests, life … becomes a battle for supremacy between factions and interests.”Intriguingly, variations on this theme have been explored in a string of recent publications, both secular and religious. In his valedictory work Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times, the late chief rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, criticises the modern priority of “I” over “we”. Robert Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett’s The Upswing and Michael Sandel’s The Tyranny of Merit both attempt to map out a civic territory that avoids the twin dangers of selfish individualism and illiberal populism.In recent years, Christian leaders have too often been silent, complicit or cravenly proactive, as the Bible has been deployed as a weapon in conservative culture wars. The image of Trump marching through teargassed streets to brandish a bible outside a Washington church encapsulated a kind of capitulation. But in the new year, liberal Christians have grounds for cautious optimism. In the necessary project of carving out a new space for a less polarised, more fraternal public square, they have a vital role to play. More