Speaking at a summit in New Delhi last Monday, former Prime Minister Liz Truss claimed that in the wake of Trump’s historic second election victory (which he may claim as his third), Britain needed a copycat version. “Frankly I think we need a British Trump; the question is who that individual might be”.
She asserted that the British public want to see the “same kind of revolution that Trump is delivering in America”. Having spent just forty-nine days as PM back in the autumn of 2022, Truss is perhaps not the first figure one would turn want to lead such a revolution, yet her statement is by no means far-fetched.
The UK general election results from July revealed a “loveless landslide” for Labour and it is in this lovelessness which Truss is finding her argument. The right-wing party Reform UK—headed by the ever-controversial Nigel Farage—achieved 4.1 million votes, some 14.3% of the total vote share, putting it ahead of the Liberal Democrats by 600,000 votes.
Up and down the country, Reform produced strong results, coming second in 98 constituencies of which 89 were to Labour. The argument therefore for a “British Trump” to round up the rest of these votes is not totally far-fetched, and Truss is confident therefore that personifying mass discontent—as Trump has done to such success—is exactly what the UK needs.
2024 has been a turbulent year for democracy in the west, and right-wing gains have been made in the US, Austria, France, and Germany, with the latter facing a snap election in February which could completely alter the progressive pro-migration stance Western European democracies have adopted in the twenty-first century. Truss therefore argued a need to mirror such change in the UK and explored the idea of a “fighting force” being formed of “the best of Nigel Farage’s Reform, and Tories such as Suella Braverman”. Based on the aforementioned voting information Truss claimed it to be only a matter of time before we are “going to see major changes in Europe as well as in Britain”.
With a UK general election not likely to happen until the earliest date of 2028 (if Labour perform well), it is unlikely that such a “revolutionary” change will occur in the UK for a while. Yet there is doubt that such a Trumpian figure could succeed in the UK at all. Differences in democratic structure between Britain and the US mean in the UK we vote for individual constituents rather than a presidential head of state and therefore one could argue that the personification of change which Trump illustrates across the pond would be difficult to mirror simply due to our voting structure.
Furthermore, would the British public really have the patience for a character such as Trump? Would a Trumpian figure of such criminal negligence be able to survive the midweek scathings of PMQs? Given the media outrage regarding the Labour Party’s “freebiesgate”, would a leader like Trump, which Truss is calling out for, be able to manipulate our political landscape with the same success?
Truss as a character best aligns with the conspiracy-infected world of MAGA, and she claims her disastrous mini-budget was forced out by the bureaucratic deep state, rather than by any of its own faults. Yet despite her MAGA tendencies, she was the first to admit that “I have already put my fingers in the fire and had them severely burnt.” What gives anybody else the right to believe that the torch of Westminster, an alien world to those in the States and therefore anybody aligning with the idealism of MAGA, would not leave them just as scarred?