Mark Seddon says Trump’s tariffs won’t be enough to stop the Overton window moving ever rightward – Labour needs to help break it
The late Zhou Enlai famously responded to a question from Henry Kissinger, when he was first making overtures to the Chinese, as he asked about the effects of the French Revolution: “It is too early to say”, said Zhou. Even the old men of the Chinese Politbureau found this amusing, for Zhou had been referring to the French riots of 1968 and not the revolutionary events of 1789, as Kissinger had imagined. Much the same answer could of course, be applied now in relation to the Trump global tariffs, which have made President Hoover’s notorious and disastrous Tariff Act of 1930 look like a romp in the park in comparison. Trump blinked first, as it rapidly became apparent that the United States bond market was taking a mighty hit, and because it very soon became apparent that many countries were now beginning to look to China as a stable, predictable country to do business with as opposed to the USA. How the wise old men in the Politbureau must be smiling now.
Events are moving at a pace at which it is difficult to keep up. The tendency for many is to keep their heads down and somehow hope for the best. It is too early to tell whether Trump and his MAGA cult have been seriously damaged by the global market turmoil of recent weeks. It is however a point in history where we can begin to see the limits of US hegemony and the reality of a Chinese economy that has become in many respects rather more advanced than that of the Europeans or Americans. China’s historic state interventionism means that it can produce most of what it needs. This was supposed to be America’s century. It is beginning to look as though the second half of the century may belong to China.
Trump’s tariffs may have been temporarily suspended, but it has left countries such as ours reeling. Keir Starmer’s special pleading; his ostentatious offer of “an unprecedented second State Visit” (reportedly against the advice of Buckingham Palace) has produced no special relationship, no special favours. Britain was hit by 10% tariffs, because we export so little in terms of manufactured goods to the US and because Trump cannot think beyond widgets to services, which this country does rather better at providing. Oddly enough, the EU, which exports rather more manufactured goods, was hit by a 20% tariff, presenting Britain with a fleeting BREXIT benefit, possibly one of the very few to have come our way.
In Britain, the right-wing politicians and commentators who had been sporting MAGA hats and boasting of their tickets to Trump’s inauguration fell strangely quiet. Silence from the unsettling figure of Robert Jenrick. Silence from the equally ghastly Suella Braverman and silence from someone who is never backward in coming forward and boasting about his friendship with Donald Trump, Nigel Farage. It might be tempting to think that Farage’s political alliance with Trump will be damaging to him and to ReformUK. Trump is, after all, streets ahead of Putin when it comes to instilling fear and trepidation into the great British public. But since the Government does not wish to offend Trump, it is failing to strike any blows against Farage and ReformUK. In fact, a cursory study of local council by-election results reveals a degree of commonality. Very few people are voting, but where they are, the Labour vote is in free fall in England, Wales and even in Scotland, where ReformUK are picking up seats. Former Scottish MSP and a contender for the leadership of the Scottish Labour Party, Neil Findlay, left the party in disgust at the decision by Rachel Reeves to cut disability benefits. This is what he has had to say: “the Labour vote is falling quicker than the Stock Market following Trump’s tariffs – there is a choice for Labour MPs; pretend to yourselves that things will improve under the current leadership and their policies, or get rid of them and start all over again”.
On the same day that he wrote this, ReformUK took 46.6% of the vote in a Tameside council by-election in the seat of Business Secretary, Jonathan Reynolds. Labour’s vote fell by 32.2%. As Keir Starmer boasted, in an act of supreme self-harm, that there would be no change to his and Reeves’ strictures on fiscal rules, Nigel Farage was pictured with a steelworker in front of the Queen Anne blast furnace at the threatened Scunthorpe steelworks, the last plant that makes primary steel in Britain. Grinning to the camera, Farage called for the final remnant of privatised British Steel to be “nationalised”. Later, in a plush TV studio, the MP who represents the now shuttered steel town of Port Talbot, Stephen Kinnock, called for British Steel to be “run by experts”. Whatever this was supposed to mean, suddenly the stark prophesy of that old Jeremiah, Enoch Powell, came to mind; “In the end, the Labour Party could cease to represent labour.” Powell uttered these words during the infamous Smethwick by election in 1964, the most racist by election in British history. Race, unemployment, poor housing, collapsing welfare and social services; the neo-liberal World Order may be shuddering, but here in Britain, we are still wedded to TINA (there is no alternative). But there is an alternative, and the left should be shouting it from the rooftops, whatever Starmer and Reeves may say.
It would be easy to dismiss the Farage threat and not to learn the lessons of the BREXIT vote, which was an earlier cri de coeur from people who kept on being told “how bad things would be” if they voted “Leave”. The common retort from so many who did just that was “Things can’t get any worse than they already are!” Arguably, things are worse now and likely to get worse. And there is no reason to suppose that Britain will be any different to the United States, Germany or to Hungary. The Overton Window just keeps moving rightwards.
There are those who say, “Ah, but there are four years before the next election and much can change”, which is of course, all true. But even if one were to be optimistic and imagine that a battered and weakened British economy can withstand the global shocks and somehow build itself out of recession by increasing defence spending – itself something of a chimaera, economic growth is meaningless if it manifests itself in gradual trickle-down. On current trajectories, the Starmer and Reeves Labour Government is actually likely to increase the number of people living in poverty while continuing to grow inequality. All of this is fertile ground for the Right, which will play hard on race and “national identity”. Since even here, Starmer’s response is to attempt to triangulate with ReformUK and promise to be even tougher, it takes us back to the old question: “Why buy Pepsi when you can buy Coke?”
Take the Labour party out of the equation and view the growing response and fight back here at the grassroots to rule by oligarchs and hucksters, alongside the global disgust and fury aimed at Trump, Netanyahu and other hand ringing Western leaders over what is a very clear genocide that is taking place against the Palestinian people in Gaza, and you begin to hope that the Overton Window may be stretching to breaking point.
But we cannot be spectators. We have to help break it.