Writing from Los Angeles, one journalist recently told me that in the UK she thought that: \u2018Labour are completely failing to meet the moment. I almost spit out my lunch yesterday when I saw their plan for change nonsense. Charts\/ statistics\/ wonkish and total lack of passion or overarching vision. The Right will clean up unless they [Labour] drastically change course. Immigration is amplified by the erosion of quality of life and easily exploited as a threat to already dislocated and struggling people. \u2026 something the Left is ignoring – is the Trans issue. This has a slightly different texture in the US but as the Supreme Court case this week shows, the Right have also tapped into deep concern about the push for children being given puberty blockers etc\u2026 and the (also irrational) defence of males in women\u2019s and girls\u2019 sport as a \u2018Left gone mad\u2019. It\u2019s working. The Right know they have a strong case on this one. Farage as you know, mirrors Trump in that he is a media concoction. Without its help initially he\u2019d be a side show. They cultivated a monster and the closed world of London media\/political and think tank class remain detached from reality. Democrats here are making the same mistakes. Both parties need a bruiser and a gifted storyteller to stand a chance. If they haven\u2019t got an inspiring narrative allied with policies that shift the dial they\u2019re fucked. \u2026 In the US taxing the super-rich is popular – and at least Dems talked about that. Labour is afraid of their own shadow. Plus, if they don\u2019t immediately ban all and any foreign contributions to elections, they are enablers, pure and simple. Sorry for the rant. The whole thing is terrifying.\u2019 [2]<\/p>\n
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Starmer meets Trump<\/p><\/div>\n
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It is mostly women who are speaking out from within the ruling Labour party in the UK. Rosie Duffield\u2019s resignation letter<\/a> from the Labour Party, explained in the autumn of 2024: \u2018Since the change of government in July, the revelations of hypocrisy have been staggering and increasingly outrageous. I cannot put into words how angry I and my colleagues are at your total lack of understanding about how you have made us all appear. How dare you take our longed-for victory, the electorate’s sacred and precious trust, and throw it back in their individual faces and the faces of dedicated and hardworking Labour MPs?! The sleaze, nepotism and apparent avarice are off the scale. I am so ashamed of what you and your inner circle have done to tarnish and humiliate our once proud party. Someone with far-above-average wealth choosing to keep the Conservatives’ two-child limit to benefit payments which entrenches children in poverty, while inexplicably accepting expensive personal gifts of designer suits and glasses costing more than most of those people can grasp – this is entirely undeserving of holding the title of Labour Prime Minister. Forcing a vote to make many older people iller and colder while you and your favourite colleagues enjoy free family trips to events most people would have to save hard for – why are you not showing even the slightest bit of embarrassment or remorse?\u2019 [3<\/a>]<\/p>\n When government minster Anneliese Dodds resigned in February 2025 she wrote<\/a>: \u2018These are unprecedented times, when strategic decisions for the sake of our country’s security cannot be ducked. \u2026 You have maintained that you want to continue support for Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine; for vaccination; for climate; and for rules-based systems. Yet it will be impossible to maintain these priorities given the depth of the cut \u2026 the reality is that this decision is already being portrayed as following in President Trump’s slipstream of cuts to USAID.\u201d [4<\/a>]<\/p>\n In other words, when resigning, Dodds was asking why the Prime Minster of the UK was following the lead of the President of the USA so closely. This hits hard because although Trump may be popular among some in the USA few people in Britain can understand why. As was explained repeatedly in many recent viral posts<\/a>: \u201cSo the fact that a significant minority \u2013 perhaps a third \u2013 of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think \u2018Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy\u2019 is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:<\/p>\n \u2022 Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.<\/p>\n \u2022 You don\u2019t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it\u2019s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws \u2013 he would make a Trump.\u201d [5<\/a>]<\/p>\n Of course, there are a tiny number of people and organisations in Britain who do support want Trump\u2019s administration are doing in the USA and dream of that being introduced in the UK. Take, for example the Adam Smith Institute which gives awards to young writers (almost always men) to pen articles, which the institute then publishes with titles such as \u2018Britain needs more slums<\/a>\u2019. In which those in favour of the kind of deregulation going on in the USA explain their thinking: \u2018The market desperately wants to provide houses people can live in at prices they can afford \u2013 but in the eyes of local authorities these houses are too small, or too tall, or the ceilings are too low, or the windows not energy efficient enough. Sweeping deregulation is the only way to provide Britain with the slums it is crying out for.\u2019 [6<\/a>]<\/p>\n I normally include a graph or two in these articles so here are two \u2013 simply taken from Wikipedia<\/a>, because some kind anonymous soul has done the hard work and done it well.[7<\/a>] The first shows all polls in the UK since the General Election last year. Together, the Conservatives and Reform polls combined are roughly twice those of Labour. The second graph shows something similar for Scotland; but that there, the SNP provides an alternative to this that is growing in strength, and Labour have plummeted more quickly in popularity from 35% to 18%.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Recent UK opinion polls according to Wikipedia, July 2024 – April 2025<\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n In 1935 Sinclair Lewis published the USA best-seller \u2018It Can\u2019t Happen Here<\/a>\u2019 warning Americans through the story of a presidential who \u2018who promises poor, angry voters that he will make America proud and prosperous once more, but takes the country down a far darker path.\u2019[8<\/a>] It is now happening there. It could happen here. It is unlikely to happen in Scotland. What happens in future to the public sectors depends on politics most of all.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Recent opinion polls in Scotland according to Wikipedia, July 2024 – February 2025<\/p><\/div>\n References<\/strong>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/wp-content\/files\/Figure_1-15.png\")
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\n1. https:\/\/labourhub.org.uk\/2025\/04\/10\/the-left-must-embrace-the-precariat\/
\n2. Whose name I keep anonymous as these are not safe times to name everyone.
\n3. https:\/\/news.sky.com\/story\/rosie-duffields-resignation-letter-in-full-13224368
\n4. https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/news\/uk\/politics\/anneliese-dodds-quits-resignation-letter-b2706631.html
\n5. https:\/\/thenewgeneration.blog\/2025\/01\/25\/why-do-some-british-people-not-like-donald-trump\/
\n6. https:\/\/www.adamsmith.org\/blog\/planning-transport\/britain-needs-more-slums
\n7. https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election
\n8. https:\/\/www.openculture.com\/2018\/07\/penguin-classics-back-cover-blurb-sinclair-lewis-1935-novel-cant-happen.html#google_vignette<\/p>\n