This is the third in a series of three articles (catch up with part one and part two). Although Donald Trump isn’t exactly my favourite person, it does provide us with some opportunities. Here are my top reasons for being positive about what the future holds with Trump in the White House. Whether you like or dislike the result, here are my Top Ten Reasons to try to be optimistic…
1) Hillary Clinton didn’t win. She had all the hallmarks of being continuity-Obama with extra political baggage, the continuation of a political dynasty.
2) The Left hate the result. Those who are currently yelling, screaming and throwing temper tantrums, those who are suggesting the world’s about to end and proposing murder – why, if Clinton had won, these people would have got what they deserved.
3) A UK-USA trade deal becomes easier to negotiate. Donald Trump is an Anglophile. He might even put the bust of Winston Churchill back in the Oval Office. We won’t be at the back of the queue for a trade deal under any circumstances. It’s not in America’s best interests to put us at the back of the queue anyway, and even under Clinton that wouldn’t have actually happened. It was just an Obama-electioneering threat. But you get the impression that this will actually be a priority for the White House now.
4) Nigel Farage has good connections with Donald Trump. This can’t be a bad thing, one way or another. It’s likely to keep UKIP relevant and in the news; even if the Trump association is something of a double-edged sword electorally in the UK, at least it’s free publicity!
5) The European Union is reacting badly to it. With the EU seemingly prepared to cut off its nose to spite its face over America, they’re not going to be negotiating their own trade deal quite so quickly any more. This way, we might actually get in there first – and gain a competitive advantage.
6) The Supreme Court won’t get worse. The Supreme Court seems to have lost its way in recent years. Judicial activism has become a problem; with a Democrat in the White House things could have got very bad over the next four years, democracy being bypassed by ever-more creative interpretations of the US Constitution. At least Donald Trump won’t appoint any left-wing activist judges. Gay marriage in Ireland was decided by a referendum, and in the UK by 650 MPs. But it was decided in the USA by five unelected judges. Ireland’s decision was democratic; the UK’s arguably so (though a Manifesto commitment or referendum would have been preferable), but the USA’s wasn’t at all. I’m a (small-d, I promise!) democrat; I put the power of the people above such moral issues. If you support the US decision, the way they made it was wrong.
7) Trump may well change. In the primaries, aiming for a small percentage of Republicans, he took a hard-line approach. In the General Election, aiming for just over 50% of the vote, he softened it slightly. He’s shown himself to be prepared to adapt, and now that he’s representing all Americans he may adapt to that too. It’s possible.
8) The American system has constitutional checks and balances on the President’s power. If Trump proposes economic policies that are too left-wing, then he may not get them through a Republican-controlled House and Senate.
9) The Republicans won down-ticket too, often by bigger margins than Trump. Trump was facing the incredibly-unpopular Clinton; up against less-unpopular Democrats there was a danger that the Republicans might lose control of the Senate. But actually, in many cases the Republican Party proved to be more popular than Trump. In Florida, for example, Trump won by 1.3% – but down-ticket, Rubio beat his less-unpopular-than-Clinton Democrat opponent by 7.7%.
10) The future looks bleak for Senate Democrats. Not only is there a solidly Republican House and barely-Republican Senate, but also when you look at the seats up for grabs in 2018, it’s hard to see the Democrats taking control then either. Arizona, Wyoming, Tennessee, Utah, Texas, Nevada, Nebraska and Mississippi are the only States with Republican defences in the Senate in 2018. President Trump will means that there’ll be a Republican vice-President, so even a 50-50 tie would keep Republican control of the Senate. The Democrats would have to win three of the States on that list and not lose any, which would be a really tough ask – especially as the Democrats will be defending the solidly-red State of Indiana.
Whether we individually like or dislike Donald Trump is no longer the issue. I’m not going to suddenly like him, and others aren’t going to suddenly stop their hero-worship of him, but either way he’s going to be the President of the United States of America. Britain needs to work to make the best of it either way, and surely we can all agree on that.
Ajax – I understood Nigel totally focused on Referendum, no side issues. And yes, you are right, but at the time I could understand Nigel standing down he had been doing so much (as you say, he has recovered rather rapidly!) At that time UKIP should have been in Nuttalls safe Deputy hands. What I have against him is that fairly or unfairly I firmly believe,that Paul was second only to Nigel in status after the referendum, and, had he stood firm and stood up, we would never have had all this nonsense because he would then have moved seamlessly into the Leadership role from Deputy, supported by everyone including me. But he stood down.
I believed UKIP had every chance, an open goal, a chance to get at least a thousand members just after the referendum. Maybe Nigel was equally to blame, but in my eyes he had done more work and suffered more abuse, so he was entitled to a rest.
So I am afraid what I blame Paul for is letting down everyone who believed in UKIP and who voted Leave, and the consequent probable destruction of the party, because with no direction,the back stabbing began and the opportunists took over. And just to put the lid on it, his excuse, as you know from,the video you linked me to, was that he ‘was leaving it to the young’. At such a time! At the worst time possible. An error of judgement doesn’t come near it, if it is true. But honestly, Ajax, it can’t be.
“…leaving it to the young”
Heaven help us if that were to be the case and their leftist indoctrination were to prevail.
Time for a pre-qualification process to be implemented for politicians based on minimum age and having several years of real world work experience.
Perhaps the leadership candidates would like to publish their compliance with such a policy? Experience of UKIP quoted by some is a poor substitute.
@Dee – fair argument, but I suspect the reason Nuttall didn’t throw his hat into the ring earlier was because that he thought his candidacy against the Farage backed puppets of Woolfe & James would fail (because a majority of UKIP members have a curious messianic faith in F. & do whatever he says, like Panmelia, as was showed during the hustings for those candidates & the 2nd ones election) & he wanted to keep his powder dry for a later chance – which in due course came when the 1st 2 puppets collapsed, & the 3rd (Kassam) was obviously F. scraping the barrel with diminishing returns to the degree of endangering the party.
I blame F. for this chaos over the last 6 months in UKIP’s leadership Dee, not Nuttall (despite the disingenuousness of a man in his 30’s talking about a handing over to a ‘younger generation’), which was as much an obvious untruth as F. ‘wanting his life back’, i.e. wanting to return to private life, which didn’t last 3 days before he was doing public media interviews again all over the place, airing the possibility of appearing in tv game shows if the fee was high enough, doing his radio show & running off to the USA to thrust himself into the v. public spotlight of the American Presidential election; & now he’s running around in front of any tv camera that will film him hankering after some sort of odd v. public go-between job between HMG & Trump.
Farage should have ensured an orderly transition Dee, or he shouldn’t have quit to begin with, not have suddenly just walked out of the post & then created chaos by trying to retain control of it in his temporary absence by the appointment of 3 out of their depth stooges to keep the leader’s seat warm for him in what was almost certainly intended as being a temporary absence on his part, despite his disingenuous words.
You’re applying a level of critical scrutiny to N. here that is far more severe than that which you’re applying to F., which is unfair.
Ajax, I agree that Nigel does bear some blame, but, although you don’t agree with this I think the fact that Brexit and UKIP via his Trump association have gone Global means it is harder for May to backslide, and so Nigel has helped not hindered Brexit. Nigel will be remembered in history for the years he spent fighting the EU and spreading courage world-wide – Paul might be an add-on in that history.
Whether Paul stood or not, he was Deputy Leader until Diane signed up, he should have been on the News daily refuting remoaners. It was so awful reading all the guns-ho for UKIP comments on social media after the referendum, fading gradually to bewilderment, then despair, lastly anger – this from ordinary people, not members. I was ashamed and angry, and I remain so. Finally, if the ‘younger generation’ excuse for Pauls lack of action is untrue – what else is? We must agree to disagree – but respect, Ajax, no hard feelings!
The election of Trump will give the political establishment a well deserved kick up the backside; that is enough for now. Let’s wait and see what his policies turn out to be.
Plenty of reasons to be cheerful Jonathan!
Re, your Point 2, I think the Left are four-time losers so far and counting. Let’s see… the GE result, Corbyn(!), the EU referendum and Trump.
Oh; and I’ve thought of a fifth (as you also noted) … Nigel’s blooming relationship with Trump 🙂
Time for a sixth; a united UKIP to hoover up all the Lefties who’ve had enough and want to be a winner for a change!
Show me the perfect man ( or woman)and I will call you a liar.
Politics is the art of the possible and sometimes the improbable.
I love the fact that Trump defied all the odds and went from impossible outsider to President elect and the fact that all the MSM were wrong and the entirety of the UK elites went from giggles/raucous laughter to disbelief.
You would think – if you only had the bbc – that Trump was a nasty thick woman groping thug who hated all mexicans..which is kind of odd as he received 29% of the latino vote.
Never has a candidate received such a vituperative and biased press standing for public office in a democracy – with the possible exception of the great Nigel Farage.
CNN,ABC,CBS,NBC, PLUS ALMOST ALL MAJOR NEWSPAPERS portrayed Trump as having no real policies. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The problems that the USA faces today are massive. Trillions in debt, millions on welfare seemingly incapable of work or having given up trying,a loony climate policy, a shaky world economy,an EU about to implode (hurrah), a demographic time bomb in the USA that may lead to civil war, and China using fraud, industrial espionage and all manner of financial warfare in order to become world power number one.
Will the UK be better with a declining USA and rising China? I dont think so.
Trump is a godsend and he has already achieved more for world stability than 8 years of oddball obama( I am trying to be polite).
Clinton is part of the globalist elites who are seriously deranged. When I once met Ken Clarke I resisted asking him about the Bilderberg Group as I knew I would not get an answer, although the idea of Clarke wrapped in a bedsheet and partaking in the mentally deranged Owl Sacrifice had me laughing at him to his face.
It seems to me that May has worked out how to do in UKIP having found its Achilles heel.
Most of those at the top in UKIP are not really even moderately revolutionary except where it’s polite – say English votes for the English. But without that the British people have no future. The toppies don’t want mobs and the press screaming at them. They left that to Nigel. Now he’s not there.
Couple the above with the feeling that we got the referendum won can we have a quiet life now and the system aches to be non controversial. Farage appears to hope that he’ll be rewarded by the establishment when he in fact has done them up like a kipper (sic). They’ll not be thanking him!
All May has to do is to talk radical and UKIP will look useless in comparison. It will carry on under the inertia which has been built up over many years but become a political hobby club like others one could mention.
The papers indeed signalled weeks ago that this was May’s plan. If it’s not then from her viewpoint it should be!
May has set a woman trap and most of those at the top in UKIP seem to want to put their foot in the jawa with their reservations about change and delicate poses on fences.
There is no future for UKIP in conventional respectability.
MN, I don’t think Nigel has ever hoped to be rewarded by the establishment. He has a strong sense of humour and likes to mock the PTB.
In the past, he’s expressed the idea that there should be more UKIP Lords, but that doesn’t mean he wants to be one of them. He mentioned the idea of being ambassador to the USA as a joke, pointing out that he doesn’t do diplomacy.
As for offering his help to the government in being a go-between for the UK, Nigel knew perfectly well what the reaction would be and that it would show them up for the unimaginative slowcoaches that they are.
He is enjoying every minute of being at the centre of the second people’s revolution this year and I’m enjoying it with him. Why should Nigel want an establishment reward when he has the gratitude and respect of millions of people?
The Sun is running a story about talks and a possible peerage and return to the Tories Panmelia. Could be trash of course. If not it’s a defusing exercise for Farage entirely in line with the apparent other scheme to ‘out radicalise’ UKIP.
The Sun has been very selective in what it has said and what it’s left out. See my comment on today’s, Thursday 17th’s News Review.
Watching Farage’s antics over the last week the more convinced I have become that UKIP does actually need a new leader now if is to prosper in the next phase of its life, & Farage’s time – highly successful as it was in leading the anti-eu crusade – has passed.
Paul Nuttall (good speech available from him at Derby on his Twitter feed) is the best option for taking the movement forward as far as I can see.
As for Trump, we’ll see how he turns out in office, I supportec his candidacy, but I fear that it will descend into Russian levels of corrupt oligarchism & the key policies that America voted for will be ditched in the process. European-America elected Trump to stop its nation being turned into a majority 3rd World society demographically thru immigration, but my sense of it is that this revolt by the voters has come 20 years too late in this regard & they’ve missed the boat; or rather they’re on the boat, it’s called the Titanic & it’s already struck the demographics iceberg, with consequences that are now set implacably in motion.
Ajax: Of course UKIP needs a new leader, but that’s because Nigel has done his bit (considerably more than a bit) for UKIP and Brexit, and now has bigger fish to fry in helping to bring down the EU, and being Trump’s go-to-guy for Anglo-American relations.
Only a rabid anti-Faragist such as yourself could describe his work in these noble causes as ‘antics’. Nigel has always been ahead of the game and he still is.
Well said Panmelia. Nigel has raised the profile of Brexit and UKIP to a Global level. The others at the top of UKIP? Well, they have either been invisible or far too visible for the wrong reasons.
@Panmelia – If you seriously think that swapping UKIP’s leadership in 2016 post the June 23 victory, for the pathetic spectacle of jetting back & forth repeatedly between London and New York with his little Gujarati side-kick in tow, taking desperate selfies hanging around like an unwanted spare-wheel in Trump Tower, begging to be some sort of mickey-louse go-between between 2 governments where there is no vacancy or need for one, is Farage ‘frying bigger fish’ than the leadership of UKIP, then you really are daft.
I’m not anti-Farage in the least, but neither am I a ‘Faragist’ like you, blinded by their strange idol worship of him to the point of being out of touch with reality.
You see a ‘pathetic spectacle’; I see a ‘Man of History’ as one American interviewer called Nigel.
I see a man who worked for 20-plus years to free the UK from the grasp of the EU, and vowed to go further by bringing an end to the EU itself and is still working hard for those goals; you see a ‘spare wheel’.
I see a man who took his goals to the USA, where UKIP and Brexit were on the periphery of American political consciousness, and shone such a spotlight on what was happening in the UK that ‘Brexit plus plus plus’ became one of the President Elect’s slogans; you see someone ‘begging’ and ‘desperate’.
So which of us is ‘blinded’ and ‘daft’?
Perhaps you have one of those ‘Snow Queen’ mirror splinters in your eye, the kind that reflects everything good and positive as bad and negative.
Ajax, I watched Paul’s speech, thanks for the info. It was very good, except that the elephant in the room for me, he has not addressed how he will ‘unite’ the party. He wants it to be united, is all he would say – under him it would be united. We all want a united party, with the same aims and a clear vision for the future, we have needed one for a long time. It was only Nigel’s force of character and dogged focus that kept UKIP relevant to the public, in spite of backstabbing events that often tried to de-rail him……those ‘senior sources’ we come up against so often.
So it seems to me that to achieve unity, Paul will necessarily have to allow those who have always been destructive when crossed, and will continue to be so when they disagree with the direction of the party, Therefore, he must intend the party to be as Mike describes, politically correct and cosy. Sort of retired UKIP, respectable UKIP, a sitting on their laurels after Brexit kind of UKIP, with several more Carswell – like MP’s in the House of Commons perhaps?
John Rees-Evans has a video worth watching on UTube, search J R-E – Liberty of Conscience.
Dee, I’m pleased to hear that you thought Nuttall’s speech was a good one as it laid out a sound strategic vision for UKIP’s future as it transitions into a domestic political movement now, i.e. to erase the dead in the water Labour Party & replace it as the party of radicalism in England’s politics – which is as big a mission as taking the eu out was before June 23, & the ‘unity’ that Nuttall is talking about will come from that sense of mission among the party & attacking an opponent to achieve it.
Any characters in UKIP’s leadership echelon who are more interested in internecine fighting & personal plotting will be ignoring Nuttall’s warning to stop this carry on, & if they don’t they will find themselves quickly ousted by him from the front-bench with the leader’s authority of decision in such matters. Nuttall doesn’t strike me as a weak man in this regard.
I really don’t know what more you can reasonably expect him to say, other than to start a public fight with Carswell/Evans/Hamilton, before he has any authority to take them on (if that proves necessary), which would merely add to the sense of chaos that Farage’s sudden desertion of the leader’s post has caused to UKIP’s command echelon.
Rees-Evans is a wild-eyed, immature (or slightly mad – I can’t tell which it is at this point) chancer, who I wouldn’t confidently put in charge of walking a dog that I valued in a local park, let alone in charge of a national level political party with UKIP’s potential.
Ajax , I would like to hear that he was prepared to address any knifing, shafting and other antics via the NEC or whatever he thinks appropriate? But, far more important,
under Pauls leadership will UKIP be following the line of refusing to support those parties in Europe opposing muslimisation, as espoused by Suzanne? If, as Paul says in,that speech (near the end) we are opposing FGM (popular, that one) sharia etc – the same things as all the ‘radical’ parties in Europe, why isn’t he saying so?
It’s not going to happen, I submit.
Lastly, Nigel’s ‘desertion’ as Leader was, for me, understandable, exhaustion one obvious reason among others – it was the desertion of the Deputy Leader when he had been left with the easy bit that has derailed Brexit more than any other single thing. All these months, we have heard nothing, while hysterical lefties have been allowed to build a head of steam. Sorry Ajax, I cannot forgive that. I don’t trust him now – leaving it to the young? He is young – he bottled it.
@Dee, Farage also steered clear of commenting on Mohammedan issues, & away from parties like the Front National – you don’t seem to judge him adversely for it as you are Nuttall; & I don’t see how you can fairly criticize Nuttall for staying out of a leadership hustings that has been overloaded with 2 Farage stooges (Woolfe & James), considering that many of the party’s membership would have blindly voted for them (& did in the case of James) purely on the basis that they had Farage’s support. Kassam was a 3rd stooge (didn’t you support his candidacy too?), & Nuttall then stepped in because things were becoming ridiculous. (I agree that Nuttall’s statements about not standing before because of wanting to pass the leader’s post to ‘the next generation’ is patently disingenuous coming from a man in his 30’s).
As for Farage’s ‘exhaustion’ … he seems to have recovered fairly quickly to me =/
These argument don’t tally from you Dee, why are you really so against Nuttall?
Ajax, I can never work this reply thing, but I wanted to reply, it has come out at the top, though it is late so you may not see it. Hope you now understand. Dee
Being the ‘voice of decency’ etc will not bring any votes once people twig there is no great cause. Goodness people are furious and want outlets for it.
Newsnight asked Kassam about ‘cheapening the dialogue’ via Breitbart. Yes indeed he said! People are fed up with delicacy and not being represented.
I mischievously note that Arron Banks has proposed a new party to stand against rotten MPs. Has he concluded that radicalism is no longer on UKIP’s agenda? If so it’s a terrible shame and worst for the ordinary members as usual.
Still ‘a week is a long time’ and we must wait upon events.
If only our “leaders” in the Commons, Lords and EU would resist the temptation to score some easy virtue signaling points by insulting Trump and show such pragmatic common sense instead.
I would add:
11. Trump shows every sign of seeing through the “Catastrophic Anthroprogenic Global Warming” racket
12. He’s already effectively killed off TTIP, which means he’s done more to protect UK public services, workers’ rights and food standards than Comrade Corbyn ever will.