President Trump is scheduled to spend four days (June Third through Sixth) in Britain to commemorate the seventy fifth anniversary of D-Day. Queen Elizabeth will throw a state banquet at which all the parliamentary leaders will attend. But the real meeting that everyone is interested in is not supposed to happen. Prime Minister May has uninvited conservative gadfly Nigel Farage to Buckingham Palace and so the only way that the meeting will happen is through Trump’s and Farage’s own organizations setting it up. How ironic is that? The two leaders who demonstrably represent the will of the common people of their respective nations have to constantly battle against the elitists in their own parties to achieve any part of the agenda the people have mandated they accomplish.
Nowhere is this clearer than in the refusal of the Tory leadership to honor the Brexit vote. The people of the United Kingdom voted unequivocally to leave the European Union. But here we are three years later and nothing has been accomplished. The Tories under Theresa May’s inept leadership have botched the Brexit effort and at this point the Remainers in their ranks are poised to prevent Brexit, even though it will doom the Tories’ majority in Parliament, leaving the Left to run the country.
But jumping into the fray is Nigel Farage. He was the moving spirit behind the original Brexit movement but after its passage he dropped out of the public eye. But three years of dithering by the Tories was too much for him. Only six weeks before the British EU parliamentary elections he formed a new party called (of course) the Brexit Party and won more seats than the Tories and Labor combined. Using this victory as a second Brexit vote he is now warning the Tories that if they don’t accomplish Brexit by Halloween, he’ll be waiting for them in the next general election and sweep them and the Labor party out of power.
Theresa May has declared her resignation and there should be a new Tory prime minister by the middle of July. If it’s Boris Johnson or another Brexiteer it’s possible that Brexit can be accomplished. Perhaps Farage’s threat will be enough to convince the Remainers that their intransigence will energize the country’s majority to sweep them out of Parliament and give the government over to the Brexit Party. It’s hard to say.
Either way we see Nigel Farage as an outsider from the business world jumping into the political arena to wrest control of the levers of power away from a supposedly conservative elite that has decided to thwart the will of its constituents in order to cozy up to the very globalist establishment bureaucracy from which Britons voted to escape. Well, if that’s not essentially Donald Trump with a British accent I don’t know what is.
I think it would be useful to have a meeting between Trump, Farage and Boris Johnson. Farage and Johnson, if they coordinate their activities can make the Brexit a reality. Trump can be the facilitator to help convince the British people that the Hard Brexit horror story that the elites have told them is only a fiction. By highlighting the booming American economy, he can prove to them that managed decline doesn’t have to be the fate of the middle class.
Of course, it’s risky for politicians to be seen getting too cozy with foreign leaders (unless they’re Leftists of course) even if it’s the President of the United States. But in this particular case I think meeting with Farage will be very good for both Trump and Farage. Seeing Farage’s stock increase will tend to focus Johnson’s mind on how important it is to get Brexit done. And indeed, accomplishing Brexit is virtually the only way the Tories have of staying in power.
But personally, what I’d love to hear is what these two men will say to each other when the video cameras and microphones aren’t on. Both of them have demonstrated that they understand how to reach the middle-class people directly. And because of that both have been attacked mercilessly by their opponents in the Media and the governing elites of both parties. I have to imagine they would enjoy just comparing notes and telling war stories. It would be like two magicians comparing experiences and trading secrets. Maybe Trump and Farage can reach out to other populist leaders within the anglosphere and beyond (e.g., Italy) and coordinate strategy against the globalists. They could form a sort of anti-globalist UN. They could call it the DN, the Disunited Nations.
So let’s hope that Trump’s trip to Britain provides some positive energy for both the American and British Right. And let’s hope that the new Tory prime minister works with Farage to convince the Remainers to support Brexit (or else).
Trump and Farage point to the peril that threatens our world. The elites have gamed democracy. And the only thing that stands in the way of some kind of repressive, decadent, roman empire-like world is a small group of independent businessmen who are defying their own class and providing the middle class with a voice and a champion. It can’t be reassuring to know that everything we believe in is hanging on the thread of a handful of men. But let’s pray that our luck holds out long enough to battle back from the edge of the cliff. And let’s make sure Trump appoints a worthy successor. After all, unlike Britain where a prime minister can stay in power for decades, an American president only gets eight years at most.