I do not want Farage and Badenoch people leading my country.
A year ago many prominent figures on the British right were vocal fans of Donald Trump, praising his plans to cut waste and tackle illegal migration.
Following the Iran war, however, some of the US president’s most ardent cheerleaders in the UK have pivoted away from him.
On Friday Nigel Farage sought to minimise his personal relationship with Trump.
“I happen to know him, but that’s by the by,” said the Reform UK leader.
Farage told the FT the bilateral partnership was
“our most important relationship in the world . . . whether it’s [Joe] Biden in the White House or Trump.”
Last year he said he hoped to become prime minister “quickly while Donald Trump is still in office.”
I think that Farage has blown it and Badenoch is his poodle. David Frost says that Trump has not turned out as he expected. What did he expect? Trump was messing up in his first term, then spent a few years keeping himself out of jail and now has shown his an idiot again.
Lord David Frost, the UK’s former Brexit negotiator, made an even more dramatic shift this week. The Conservative peer, who once welcomed Trump’s re-election as the “first great victory” of national conservatism, admitted that he had harboured high hopes for the president’s political and economic strategy.
I guess this Government is a little uninteresting but I want my Government to do its job and that’s what it has tried to do, not play a game playing around with Trump.
Now can we get on with getting our country back in shape? I think we will look back on this Government as a slow starter that made a few mistakes in its first two years but laid out some good plans of which the Pension Schemes Bill is a good example.
I do not support Labour but I support this Government because they are the choice of the country. This Government has some good people in it of which Torsten Bell is as good as any. I am not a friend of Torsten Bell or Angela Raynor or Rachel Reeves or the Prime Minister but I respect them for having integrity and being authentic.
Courting Trump displays a lack of what the British thinks of as morality. Siding with Trump is only a step from admiring Putin and disregarding the state of our planet.
We now understand our need to be closer to Europe and this sits ill with Farage and Badenoch. But whether it be defence or economics, we need to be working closer to our Europeans states.
This Iranian war was a step too far for me. It has ended any admiration for American as a leadership of the West, it has made me more interested in China, which while not a democracy is a country that has woken up to climate change in a way that America hasn’t.
So when I say “blown it”, I mean “blown it with me”. I was prepared to listen to their populism but no more.
The Hindsight Trap vs. The Strategic Windshield
With five decades of expertise, I have seen that while the general public excels at “Monday morning quarterbacking,” the top 10% succeed because they prioritize vision over reaction.
To your point Henry, on the current political climate:
The Random Walk of Populism: Popularism operates on a “random walk”—short-term, erratic movements designed solely to reach the next electoral milestone rather than following a disciplined, long-term trajectory.
The Competency Gap: In a “thinking population,” a track record of greed or professional failure would be a disqualifier; in a populist one, these traits are often rebranded as “disruption.”
The Final Contrast: While a successful retiree looks through the windshield to navigate risks, the electorate often stares into the rearview mirror, lamenting the past while the car drifts off course.
Succinctly: Hindsight is a common comfort, but foresight is a rare discipline. Populism is merely a random walk toward re-election, steered by those whose records should disqualify them, but whose rhetoric captivates a public focused on the mirror rather than the road.
Explanation ( my wife is American) “Monday morning quarterbacking” is an American idiom used to describe the act of criticizing or judging a decision after the outcome is already known