The Rotting of the Conservative Mind

Britain's Tories bend the knee to Donald Trump and disgrace themselves

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Last summer Boris Johnson was very clear. Donald Trump and his “indomitable spirit” was just what “the world needs right now”. Not only that but Johnson was “more convinced than ever that [Trump] has the strength and bravery” needed to “save Ukraine” and “bring peace” to Europe. Johnson had many reasons for supporting Trump’s bid to return to the White House but none were so preposterous, or so shameful, as his pretence Trump’s second act would somehow be good for Ukraine.

Of course Johnson was not alone. Liz Truss has also repeatedly said that Trump’s victory was an essential precursor to “saving” western civilisation. Robert Jenrick, whom 43 percent of Tory party members chose to be their new leader, also made it clear he was hoping for a Trump restoration.

Johnson and Truss at least had the grubby excuse that sucking up to MAGA Americans might be in their own financial interest - for the US market for disgraced former British PMs can be a lucrative one, there being no shortage of wealthy fools there happy to be taken for a ride. Jenrick did not even have that excuse. Nor, of course, does Kemi Badenoch, the party’s actual current leader.

Yet in a ridiculous speech this week Badenoch insisted that Trump 2.0 was an example of learning from past mistakes and returning to office older, wiser, and better placed to achieve your objectives. In an interview with Bari Weiss’s Free Press, she then intimated that the problem with Elon Musk’s DOGE nonsense was that, in a British context, it wouldn’t be “radical” enough.

So that’s the current leader of the Conservative party, the man she pipped to that increasingly bare and tawdry bauble, and two of the three most recent Conservative prime ministers. All in the Trump Tank to one degree or another; none capable of summoning the gumption, the decency, or the courage to note that what’s good for Donald J Trump might not be good for the world, for Britain, or even, heaven help us, for the Conservative and Unionist party. As exercises in moral hygiene go, this one stinks. (Tory exceptions to this baleful trend include Tom Tugendhat and Ben Wallace but they are not enough.)

Sir Keir Starmer and government ministers have the excuse they need to be cautious in their public pronouncements, no matter how much this may stick in ever craw. The Tories are unencumbered by the demands of office and have no such alibi. If they indulge Trump - and they increasingly and obviously do - it is because they choose to.

This goes beyond Ukraine but Ukraine is the plainest example of all that is rotten in this dire new world. According to Trump, President Zelensky is “a dictator” - he should hold elections, apparently, though it is not immediately obvious how those citizens in occupied Ukraine might exercise their franchise - and he “better move fast” because otherwise “he is not going to have a country left”.

So, look, can we drop the pretence Trump is not functionally and, indeed, enthusiastically on the Russian’s side? Ukraine, he erroneously suggests, started the war.

And how does Boris Johnson, once the champion of the maidan, respond to this? By saying that “Trump’s statements are not intended to be historically accurate but to shock Europeans into action”. Badenoch for her part gently noted that Zelensky is not a dictator but avoided mentioning Trump by name and then, in her statement, moved on to the more urgent business of attacking Starmer.

Even by Johnson’s standards, though, this was a new low. The words of a moral pygmy lacking the courage to acknowledge his own - admittedly obvious and serious - errors of judgement. I will say this for him, though: he surprised me, for I did not think he could sink lower in my estimations.

For, come on, little of this is difficult. The evidence is piled higher day-by-day. Here’s little Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State and Trump’s patsy to the world, noting “the incredible opportunities that exist to partner with the Russians.”

But the British right cannot quite bring itself to break with Trump. There are reasons for this that are worth some teasing out. The first is straightforwardly transactional. For platforms such as The Daily Telegraph and, I am afraid to say, The Spectator being MAGA-adjacent offers commercial opportunity. Each would like to expand into the United States; there is no value in doing so unless you are a better-written form of MAGAism than anything the Americans can provide on that front themselves.

The online world rewards prevailing trends and the wind is blowing from Trump Tower. So you get with the programme - or as close to it as you can - and trust your luck.

In the case of The Spectator, it is also the case that the new owner, Paul Marshall, a hedge-fund guy who has also sunk millions into GB News, paid £100m for a publication that has never made more than £2m. If The Spectator is not maxed-out in Britain it can certainly never make the kind of money that justifies this kind of trophy-spending. So America is the land of opportunity.

Just as the left once suffered from swimming in the same online waters as achingly-progressive Americans (notably in terms of identity politics), so it is now the British right that tarnishes itself by its association with whatever is fashionable on the other side of the Atlantic. Trump is too big for America; he leaks into Britain too.

This helps explain why Badenoch so often seems to be taking her talking points from the strangest places. Universities, it seems, are irredeemably woke and must be sharply pruned; Liberal Democrats are “nice” people but useless, the kind of folk who look after church or village halls (never mind that such voters were once the backbone of the Conservative party!) Even if Trump and Musk go too far, their instincts are broadly correct and therefore commendable.

At a mildly more sophisticated level this tendresse is expressed in these kinds of terms: “OK, Trump is aesthetically bad and it's hard to get on board with all that he's doing but what if, you know, he a) has at least half a point and b) he actually succeeds in achieving some of his stated goals? Best to hold our powder - and, yes, our nose - until things are clearer.” It is a kind of hedging: suppose it works! Weirder things have happened! Could be good for us!

Plus, of course, Trump hates all the right people too. Or, at any rate, seemed to hate all the right people until such time as it became obvious he also despises the Ukrainians. For, ultimately, Trump is all about the vibe and the feels. British Tories and others on the British right appreciate this too.

Writing in The Spectator in the week of Trump’s inauguration Charles Moore, formerly editor of that magazine and of The Daily Telegraph, biographer of Margaret Thatcher, and the High Priest of High Toryism, could hardly contain his glee. Here, at last, was an American president possessing the confidence to “at last” do “obviously right things”. Trump “creates an exhilarating sense of possibility”, and “there was something powerful in Trump’s evocation of American history” during a ceremony which, good god, left Moore reeling since, “I must admit the tears came to my eyes”.

True, there were some fastidious concerns. Tariffs are not really a great idea and was it really prudent to pardon the January Sixthers and wasn’t it poor form to fail to note or say anything nice about America’s allies? Trump should realise that “lots of countries now want to be his friends, and make the most of it”. But, come on, these are mere quibbles. The key thing to recall is that Trump drives all the right people potty. Ed Miliband’s net zero ambitions, for instance, will not survive the Second Coming of Trump.

From which you can glean that, notwithstanding his uncouthness, Trump is more broadly right than wrong and even when he’s wrong he is to be granted a degree of charity Moore and those who think like him would not for a second contemplate affording a British government led by Keir Starmer.

The whole thing stinks. Nor do leading Tories and those sympathetic to them seem to appreciate how Trumpism spreads, corrupting everything it touches. In an inteview with Konstantin Kisin - an extremely popular podcaster and YouTuber on the new right - my old friend Fraser Nelson noted that, look, of course Rishi Sunak is English. Nonsense, Kisin replied. He’s a “brown Hindu” and that’s that.

Not so very recently such sentiments would not be given houseroom on the respectable right. Yet those who sell this rancid stuff are emboldened. Kisin later suggested that Sunak is of course British but he couldn’t possibly be English, that being an ethnic matter. (It turns out there is black in the Union Jack!) Other tribunes of the right are happy to say this sort of thing too. Douglas Murray, a lamentable fixture in The Spectator, increasingly suggests it is all but impossible for British Pakistanis to be properly British. There is a ratchet here and it only goes one way.

It bears noting, I suppose, that this worldview denies Kemi Badenoch’s claims to Englishness and perhaps Britishness too. These views have always been discoverable but you do not need to dig half so deeply to find them now. This is what being very online and MAGA sympatico will do too.

It does not have to be like this and you might think that recent events should cause British Conservatives to rethink their prior tolerances. It is not, blimey, as though Trump is popular in Britain. Hitching a ride in this caravan, even if only at its rear, does not seem a wise or prudent long-term political bet. If the Tory party thinks people cannot see this and will not judge them for it then the Tory party is sorely mistaken.

It is a moral or ethical matter before it is a political one, however. Too many Tories are failing what should be a most straightforward test. Worse still - if that is possible - many of them seem incapable of noticing that this is a test and a kind of proving ground. The party has lost its own empire and is far from finding a role befitting its current diminished status but it would be better for the Conservative party, and the rest of us, if stopped being such a collection of gutless fools.

I am not a great fan of taking the knee but imagine being the kind of person who voluntarily and needlessly bends the knee to Donald Trump?

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