The question is so straightforward that it’s almost insulting to ask it: if you think yourself a supporter of democracy can you act as cheerleader for a man who is palpably, beyond doubt, not in any sense that the English language would recognise, a democrat? There are no bonbons for the right answer—yet for the contemporary Conservative party it has become a tough one.
Let’s do the basics. Donald Trump lost the US presidential election in November 2020 by 306 to 232 in the electoral college and, for good (if less relevant) measure, by seven million votes. One of those who apparently thought so was Boris Johnson, who as prime minister was quick to phone Joe Biden to congratulate him on his victory, and arranged to be photographed during the call, smiling very broadly. There’s no sign that he looks strained. He has never said that he did it under duress, nor has he ever gone as far as to suggest that Trump actually won.
Trump, by way of contrast, did not, and does not, accept that he lost the election. And you might think that would be plenty enough for any self-respecting UK politician to rein in expressions of enthusiasm for a Trump renaissance.
But if that were not sufficient, there’s the not so small matter of 6th January 2021 to consider. Trump may never be punished for his part in the riot-cum-insurrection—not least because of the US Supreme Court’s ruling to grant him widespread immunity from prosecution—but what we know about his actions and his inactions constitute a list of horrors.
For hours he did nothing to stop the violence. As the mob attacked the police and stormed the Capitol, as the vice president Mike Pence, having refused to initiate a process to overturn the election, was in danger of physical assault—the president sat in his dining room and watched Fox News. He did not condemn the violence nor, for hours, did he suggest the rioters disperse. He was advised to put out a tweet to try to stop the riot. He didn’t. Instead, he opted for the incendiary: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done.”
The precise number of people, both protesters and police officers, who died directly because of the mob violence is not clear because some deaths didn’t occur at the Capitol. It could be five, while about 140 police officers were injured.
Oh—and if this is all a long time ago—you could throw in Trump’s recent call for a military tribunal against former president Barack Obama and his wish to indict the House committee that investigated the 6th January attack. Not to mention sharing with his followers on Truth Social another user’s post depicting Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in prison jumpsuits.
This is all known, but is still extraordinary. That some people don’t seem to think this counts for much—Liz Truss and Jacob Rees-Mogg and Robert Jenrick as well as Johnson, not to mention around 70m American voters—does not lessen the offence.
Of course, if you are in power the niceties—or more accurately, the realities—apply. Hence the change in David Lammy, from opposition mode in 2018—when he described Trump as “not only a woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath” but also a “profound threat to the international order”—to a sedate, judicious Lammy en route to becoming foreign secretary this year, who refused to repeat these sentiments: “If I have the privilege of becoming foreign secretary, it will be my job to represent the national interests of this country,” which is about as well as he could mask what are almost certainly his real feelings about Trump. We await his memoirs.
It is simple. Trump is a democracy-wrecker, and British politicians voicing strong enthusiasm for his candidacy is more than a humdrum choice—it’s a degrading political act that requires the Trump supporter to be repeatedly challenged.
Liz Truss’s book is entitled Ten Years to Save the West. She doesn’t do irony. In it, there’s no attempt to address Trump’s behaviour on 6th January. We get instead an account of her spiritual journey to Trumpland—which began during his 2016 campaign against Hillary Clinton. Elderly ladies in the Norfolk market town of Swaffham, in her then constituency, were “genuinely animated by the disruptive Republican candidate”. This enthusiasm gave her “pause for thought”—not a regular form of Truss cerebral activity—and led her to think Trump had a decent chance of winning in 2016. But, lo, even after the Swaffham epiphany she was taken in by the “establishment hype” that Clinton would win.
But from the seeds planted by the blameless women of Swaffham we now have it “has to be” Trump as a key requirement to save the West. She is a Maga fan. “I want to work with fellow conservatives to take on what I believe is a real threat of Western society and civilization being undermined by left-wing extreme ideas.” And, icing on the cake, she has described Trump as “very nice”.
Other Conservative views are available—not least those of the shadow foreign secretary Andrew Mitchell, who has been in and around foreign affairs for decades. True, he is not likely to be sitting across a table negotiating with any American president soon, but he is strikingly clear and, to my mind—given his current position and the Trump infection in significant sections of his party—frank and brave. “The relationship with America is still the number one priority of UK diplomacy,” he told me. Harris or Trump? Harris. Period. Mitchell’s view on Truss’s remarks on Trump? “Ill-advised and unwise.”
Malcolm Rifkind—a former foreign secretary—gave me all the reasons, ideological and tribal, why the Conservative party is historically aligned with the Republicans, but he ends up in the same place as Mitchell. The overt support for Trump from senior Tories is “indefensible”.
Let us probe a bit further the absurdities of Boris Johnson’s position—a man always able to believe many things at once. In January this year he warmed to his inner Trump:
“In the cocktail parties of Davos, I am told, the global wokerati have been trembling so violently that you could hear the ice tinkling in their negronis… what the world needs now is a US leader whose willingness to use force and sheer unpredictability is a major deterrent to the enemies of the West.”
By July, around the time of the Republican convention, and shortly after the first assassination attempt on Trump on 13th July, that pro-Donald blather had morphed into something blunter—Trump was the man for the job:
"I believe that [his] indomitable spirit is exactly what the world needs right now, and exactly what is needed in the White House.”
Johnson went to the convention to grab a photo opportunity with Trump and subsequently tweeted the eye-catching assertion regarding Ukraine that “I have no doubt that he will be strong and decisive in supporting that country and defending democracy.”
Defending democracy?
In Johnsonian idiom, this is bonkers—both in terms of the 2020 American election and Ukraine. Johnson is a fortissimo supporter of the latter. Trump is decidedly not—actively damaging Volodymyr Zelensky’s military chances by getting Republicans in Congress to delay for months the arrival of much-needed weapons.
As for the tumult of 6th January, Johnson’s recent attempt on Times Radio to address Trump’s behaviour does reveal some mild embarrassment, but seasoned with his standard vacuity.
“In my view whatever he intended, I personally don’t think he intended to, you know, overthrow the constitution. And what actually happened was the peaceful transfer of democratic power from one administration to another, and that’s what should happen.” Indeed. Tell Donald Trump that. I doubt that Johnson did.
Conservative leadership candidate Robert Jenrick has now, sort of, joined in. In August he offered his verdict: “If I were an American citizen, I would be voting for Donald Trump.” Although by the time he sat down with Laura Kuenssberg a few weeks later he had decided that he “respected” Kamala Harris, “it’s natural,” he said, for Conservatives to “lean towards Republican candidates”. Nothing about 6th January from him either.
His rival Kemi Badenoch, supposedly the impulsive one, has managed to keep clear of the subject and her team told me she would “work with whoever is elected and it’s not her business to get involved”. Badenoch has remarked how nice it would be to resume talks on a trade deal with the US, which is a harmless thought, but getting a decent agreement for the UK out of Trump is akin to wishing for fried snowballs.
As it turns out, the Mitchell-Rifkind view is the majority one in Britain, including among Conservative voters. An Ipsos poll from July indicates 50 per cent of Britons would prefer a Harris presidency, with Trump at 21 per cent, and among 2024 Conservative voters, no matter what is going on in Swaffham, it’s Harris by 38 per cent to 23 per cent, which is heartening. Reform voters—surprise, surprise—are for Trump by 54 per cent to 18 per cent. But Reform, unlike the Conservatives, does not have a meaningful history as a democratic political party.
The pro-Trump crew in the contemporary Tory party is making the noise—and in doing so they are trashing the generations of Conservative thinking which has articulated respect for established democratic institutions.
What of the 170,000 or so Conservative members? I wrote to 20 constituency associations in the hope of getting some sense of what local office-holders think about Trump, and the vocal support given to him by former Tory prime ministers and others. Only two of them would talk—most didn’t reply. The two I did speak to were resolutely sensible. They were both critical of Trump—“he’s shocking”—and very puzzled that Tories should choose to endorse him.
But these views are not often stated loudly by senior Conservatives and we should be grateful to the Mitchell-Rifkind tendency for upholding the decencies and sustaining what once would have been considered mainstream Conservative thinking in the UK.
In America, the honourable right has been crushed and the takeover of the Republican party by Trump is complete. But some have chosen to go down fighting, above all Liz Cheney—a senior Congresswoman, formerly number three in the House Republican leadership, and daughter of the dry-as-dust former vice-president Dick Cheney. No liberal she.
Cheney believes Trump’s constant assertion that the election was stolen from him should not be countenanced. “We cannot both embrace the big lie and embrace the constitution… The nation needs a Republican party that is based upon fundamental principles of conservatism, and I am committed and dedicated to ensuring that that’s how this party goes forward.” She was, of course, removed from her leadership position in the House in 2021 and then lost her Congressional seat to a Trump loyalist the following year in a Republican primary.
Read that, then think of the Trump fandom in parts of the Conservative party, and weep.
