The most beautiful part of that political earthquake in America was seeing the ecstasy on voters’ faces as they won back their dignity. The MALDA movement (Make Americans Look Decent Again) sent an overpowering message to the imposter who had held their country’s reputation and economy hostage to his own grotesque self-interest: “You failed us, you shamed us, you stole from us. Now go.” Or, as Georgian Senator Jon Ossoff put it: “the American people have rebuked the depravity, corruption and incompetence of the failed, lame duck president.”
The fall of Republican strongholds like Texas, the Carolinas and Kansas felt like watching bullets gun down the great MAGA deception. Which was highly apt. They had wanted to livestream the state execution of a dangerous felon and here was their wish being granted in all its gory glory.
This growing rejection of right-wing nationalism is not confined to America. In the past six months voters in Brazil, Hungary, Serbia and Israel have turned their backs on self-styled Populist strongmen – or self-serving grifters getting rich and powerful on hatred and division. Maybe Britain will be next.
Trump’s humiliation is yet another damning blow for Nigel Farage who has long claimed best buddy status with him, campaigned for him, sprayed superlatives over him, boasted he “would make the world a safer place” and was photographed fawning all over him in that temple to bad taste, Trump Tower.
The night before this week’s wipe-out he stayed loyal to his great pal, telling GB News viewers that the pollsters had got it wrong, predicting Republicans would defy the “liberal consensus” and spring a “big surprise.” Oh dear. Instead of his frog-like face being drenched in milkshakes he was left with enough egg on it to make an omelette as big as Clacton. Especially when he completely miscalculated the anti-Trump mood in Texas by saying: “Elon Musk hasn’t chucked in 450 million dollars of his own money just for fun.”
It’s just the latest sign that Farage’s political antenna, once his greatest asset, is on the wane. The scrutiny over his party’s fundraising, the cringeworthy taking-on of a bin in a by-election to fend off investigation, the rows of empty seats at his pre-budget rally, the crushing by-election defeats and the ITV exposure of racist councillors have led to support for Reform falling by 10points in the past year, putting them in third place behind the Tories.
The deep-seated reasons behind the fall of his philosophical soul mate should worry Farage. Americans hated the direction their country was going in. They grew sickened by the crude policies of shutting borders, the ICE raids on innocent citizens and slashing health spending to hand tax cuts to the rich.
They tired of immigrants being scapegoated for all the country’s ills, the hijacking of their flag and the big lie about taking on global elites when the man saying it was the elite and he was not in politics to improve the lives of white working-class people left marginalised by diversity, but purely for himself.
They saw through the “average Joe at the end of the bar act,” seeing instead a two-bit TV evangelist selling snake-oil and false hope, while cynically sucking money and votes from the deluded and the hopeless. There is an old saying “what happens in America today will happen in Britain tomorrow”. We can only live in hope.
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