Creaking bridge across the Atlantic

Though he writes about the US election, William Hague unwittingly shows why the Conservatives lost their own: because of wet mock-Tories like him.

The title of his article in The Times, Trump Is No Reagan – We All Need Him to Lose, is only half right. Trump is indeed no Reagan, a truism amply communicated by his name.

But the second part makes so little sense that one has to doubt Lord Hague’s mental competence. He seems not to realise that, for Trump to lose, Harris has to win. Yet Lord Hague doesn’t even attempt to show why that victory would be any good for America or, for that matter, Britain.

Parochially speaking, Trump is rather well disposed toward Britain, while Harris hates her with a barely concealed passion.

Her Jamaican father, a Marxist professor of economics, was oppressed by dastardly British colonialists all the way to Stanford. And her scientist mother was downtrodden in Madras to such an extent that she had to take her emotional wounds to Berkeley. Kamala mentions her parents’ CVs often, and with much passion. One could be forgiven for believing that she regards moving from Jamaica and India to California as a harrowing ordeal, for which she holds Britain responsible.

Lord Hague is so effusive about Ronald Reagan, and so derisive about Trump, that I for one am ready to vote for the former in preference to the latter. That, however, isn’t an option, and Lord Hague’s animadversions are as pointless as they are malevolent.

This isn’t to say Trump is above criticism. It’s true that his obsession with protectionist tariffs isn’t normally associated with fiscal conservatism. It’s also true that he seems to advocate the same mistake David Stockman, Reagan’s economic guru, made by putting too much faith in the Laffer Curve.

Arthur Laffer drew that geometrical shape to show that higher tax rates don’t necessarily produce higher tax revenue. However, when he became the OMB Director under Reagan, Stockman found out to his horror that, as he put it in his book, “The Laffer Curve doesn’t pay for itself.”

That is, tax cuts must be accompanied by a concomitant reduction in spending, a harsh economic reality that seems to escape Trump. In general, his economic pronouncements tend to be the kind of demagoguery that plays big in downmarket public bars, but has little chance of improving public finances.

Lord Hague waxes nostalgic about the Republican Party when “it was in the safe hands” of “the great Senator John McCain” and Mitt Romney. Their ideas were so closely aligned with Mr Hague’s (as he then was) that “the transatlantic bonds of conservatism held fast.”

Add the adjective ‘wet’ or, better still, the particle ‘non-’ before ‘conservatism’, and Lord Hague’s nostalgia would be justified. He makes that clear by saying that “political ideas flow freely across the ocean. Isn’t Britain’s new government influenced, in its ambitions for renewable energy and deficit spending to fund public investment, by the confidence of the Biden administration in pursuing those goals?”

Indeed it is: both governments are united in their wholehearted commitment to destroying their economies with foolish policies based on fraudulent science. If such is Lord Hague’s idea of economic unison, then both countries would be better off each treading its own path.

Meanwhile, he continues to tug on our heart’s strings: “It is hard for British Conservatives to accept that the Republican Party we knew so recently has become inhabited by something quite different, by a cult of personality rather than a political philosophy. It is as if a close friend has died, or at least taken leave of their senses.”

Hold on a moment, where did I put those damn handkerchiefs… There, we can talk now, and let’s ignore Hague’s woke use of a plural pronoun with a singular antecedent.

Fair enough, the Republican Party has changed since Reagan’s time, as has the Conservative Party since Maggie’s tenure. However, the impression one gets from Lord Hague’s dirge is that the main opposing parties, Democratic and Labour, have remained the same.

He is right in saying that Trump is no conservative, although on balance he is more conservative than Lord Hague. But the opposition Trump faces isn’t the Democratic Party of Jimmy Carter or even Walter Mondale. It’s a crypto-Marxist group, with ‘crypto-’ on its way out. Similarly, our own Labour Party has just passed a whole raft of Marxist legislation designed to stoke up class war along the lines of The Communist Manifesto.

It’s reasonably clear to those who, unlike Lord Hague, can reason, that the gentlemanly ‘conservatism’ dripping wet is powerless to stem the flow of subversive Marxism threatening to engulf Britain first and America second. Since real political conservatism is moribund in Britain and well-nigh nonexistent in America, perhaps it takes the radical populism of a Trump or a Farage to put up effective resistance.

Lord Hague is sympathetic to our allies facing barbarian onslaught, the Ukraine, Israel and, potentially, Taiwan. He correctly remarks that today’s world is turbulent and the maelstrom jeopardises the West and hence world peace. Faced with such threats, he thinks the West would be unsafe if led by Trump – and it was much safer when led by Reagan.

That may be true, especially since during the eight years of Reagan’s presidency the US defence spending increased by 66 per cent. Trump, on the other hand, makes regular pronouncements on America’s defence budget being bloated because she ill-advisedly has to pay for the defence of others. He has also said occasionally that, if other countries can’t look after themselves, he is inclined to let them sink or swim on their own.

However, Trump isn’t the paragon of verbal responsibility. He may say one thing and do another, keeping everyone guessing. He may also come off the wall like Humpty Dumpty, and with the same effect.

Lord Hague deplores Trump’s unpredictability, comparing it unfavourably with Reagan’s unwavering commitment to the defence of the West, not just the US. I share his fears for the future of the Ukraine especially, what with Trump’s transactional eagerness to do a deal with Putin.

Kamala Harris, on the other hand, is entirely predictable, something that escapes Lord Hague’s attention. She is guaranteed to continue Biden’s policy of dripping just enough lifeblood into the Ukraine’s arm to keep the country in the fight until it bleeds out. And I have to remind Lord Hague once again that it’s not Reagan but Harris who is the alternative to Trump.

It takes two not just to tango but also to stand in elections. Sniping at Trump is good knockabout fun, and he is indeed an inviting target. However, saying on that basis that we need Harris to win has as little to do with conservatism as does Lord Hague’s career.

Given the actual choice facing the American electorate, I’d vote for Trump any day and ten times on Tuesday (a voting pattern perfected by the Democratic Party).