Should-Read: Anatole Kaletsky: The Divergence of US and British Populism

Should-Read: IMHO, Anatole Kaletsky is over credulous: He believes what the Republican establishment told him at the Milken Institute Conference—that everything is under control. It isn’t. Or, if it is, it could blow in any moment in any of a number of different ways. That the Republican establishment in Los Angeles thought that its highest priority was to sooth the rich of America with the meme that everything was just fine is information. But it does not necessarily reflect reality:

Anatole Kaletsky: The Divergence of US and British Populism: “Trump’s key economic officials… plus a galaxy of Congressional officials and business leaders, made clear that Trump… is only a temporary aberration… https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/trump-resistance-brexit-acceptance-by-anatole-kaletsky-2017-05

…The US has taken a detour into a theme park of nationalist nostalgia, but it remains focused on the future and the benefits of globalization…. Trump will not deliver most of his domestic agenda. The Rust Belt will not enjoy a surge of infrastructure spending. US relations with Mexico or China will not change much. Trump’s main tax proposals will not get through Congress. And Trump’s promise to “repeal and replace” Obamacare immediately after taking office is almost certain to give way, under public pressure, to “reform and repair.”

After this immersion in US pragmatism, my return to British politics was deeply depressing…. The US has taken only 100 days to see through Trump’s “alternative reality” (though perhaps not through Trump himself). Almost nobody in Britain is even questioning the alternative reality of Brexit…. How might we explain the starkly different responses in American and British civil society to the dangerous flirtation with nationalist populism? In America, the immediate response to policies that were logically incoherent, economically dishonest, and diplomatically impossible to implement was an upsurge of opposition and debate…. Most important, US businesses started lobbying immediately to block any Trump policies that threatened their economic interests. As a top Senate staffer told the Milken conference, Walmart and other retailers “were extremely effective at educating our members”….

Now compare all this US opposition to the passivity in Britain after last year’s referendum…. Brexit has become an immovable dogma, immune to challenge or questioning of any kind…. No major British companies have tried to protect their interests by campaigning to reverse the Brexit decision. None has even publicly pointed out that the referendum gave Prime Minister Theresa May no mandate to rule out membership of the European single market and customs union…. The taboo against questioning Brexit has not been justified by appeals to reason, economics, or national interest. Instead the “will of the people” has been invoked….

There was never any doubt about the democratic legitimacy of opposition in the US…. A clear majority of Americans voted against Trump…. Trump lost the popular vote by 2%….

In Britain’s unwritten constitution, there is only one limitation on the power of a prime minister with a parliamentary majority–the right of voters to change their minds. But what happens if anyone who tries to persuade voters to change their minds is delegitimized as a denier of democracy and an “enemy of the people”?… Britain will take a wrong turn onto the bumpy path of nostalgic nationalism, while the US rejoins Europe on the modern highway of multicultural globalization.