\n<\/p>\n
A<\/span> popular maxim on the American right is that politics is downstream from culture. In the UK, it increasingly feels like politics is simply downstream from the US. With Reform UK ascendant in the polls, Nigel Farage \u2013 officially MP for Clacton, unofficially Donald Trump\u2019s emissary to the UK \u2013 is setting the terms of the national conversation, and he is importing them directly from across the pond.<\/p>\n Over the past few months, Reform has sought to launch \u201cDoge\u201d initiatives (referencing Elon Musk\u2019s department of government efficiency), waged war on DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) employment schemes, and called for the UK government to embrace crypto and create a bitcoin digital reserve at the Bank of England, following Trump\u2019s lead. It seems the Brexiteers were right: Britain doesn\u2019t make anything any more \u2013 not even its own bogeymen.<\/p>\n Reform\u2019s repeated attacks on DEI are particularly striking because DEI doesn\u2019t technically exist in the UK. The equivalent framework is called EDI (equality, diversity and inclusion), and it is nowhere near as prominent as Reform seems to think. At the national level, Reform has claimed that cutting such equality and diversity schemes could save central government \u00a37bn a year \u2013 according to 2022-23 figures, the real figure is \u00a327m. Farage nonetheless insists that the British left \u201cobsess about DEI and spend plenty of public money on it\u201d. After Reform\u2019s success at the local elections in May, he warned that all those working in diversity for Reform-controlled councils \u201cbetter be seeking alternative careers very, very quickly\u201d. But the sought-after image \u2013 woke council members walking out of county hall with their redundancy boxes while ordinary, hardworking Britons applaud the return to common sense \u2013 is unlikely to materialise. A recent investigation by the Guardian found that in Reform\u2019s 10 councils, the total number of jobs connected to equality and diversity amounts to fewer than five full-time positions and accounts for about 0.003% of their combined budget.<\/p>\n Under Trump\u2019s presidency, Doge has vastly overestimated the scale of its government savings \u2013 in one notable instance it misfiled an $8m saving as an $8bn one \u2013 and DEI has been blamed for everything from a plane crash in Washington to wildfires in California to inflation. A sober assessment of the pros and cons of DEI initiatives \u2013 the benefits they can bring to companies, their approach to systemic inequalities that can be superficial box-ticking \u2013 has nothing to do with the rightwing backlash against them. Republicans aren\u2019t looking for alternative solutions, because attacking DEI gives them everything they need: a way to foment resentment against state bureaucracy, the left, marginalised groups and minorities \u2013 appealing to xenophobia and serving capitalist interests at the same time.<\/p>\n Why ape US ideas so transparently, especially in a country where even many on the right are repulsed by Trump? One possible answer lies in semantics. Perhaps the hope is that DEI will sound like something new and scary to Britons who are no longer moved by mentions of previous bogeymen such as \u201cpolitical correctness\u201d, \u201cthe bureaucrats in Brussels\u201d and \u201cthe woke mob\u201d, just as Doge will sound slicker and more exciting than \u201causterity\u201d despite in practice meaning the same thing: stripping local councils down to their barest components \u2013 consistent with Westminster\u2019s orders for the past 15 years. But shiny US branding will not make cuts any easier. An analysis of Reform\u2019s 10 councils by PoliticsHome found that almost 80% of their combined spending is now taken up by social care and homelessness.<\/p>\n Another explanation, however, is that Reform\u2019s rhetoric is the symptom rather than the cause of a broader Americanisation of the British right. It is telling that Farage\u2019s greatest asset in trying make DEI mean something has been GB News, itself a knockoff of Fox News, which has tirelessly warned of DEI\u2019s evils \u2013 in the NHS, the army, the civil service and so on. (\u201cIt\u2019s exasperating the number of hours I have wasted on various online \u2018training packages\u2019 on DEI topics,\u201d an anonymous \u201csenior soldier\u201d revealed in a GB News exclusive, giving Britons a sense of what\u2019s at stake.)<\/p>\n GB News also recently announced plans to expand its coverage to the US with a nightly show about American politics from September. \u201cWe\u2019ve seen time and again this year that a decision made on one day in Washington DC is felt the next day in Washington, Tyne and Wear,\u201d GB News\u2019s editorial director, Michael Booker, explained. Paul Marshall, the billionaire hedge fund manager who co-owns GB News, has deepened ties between the UK and US right through other ventures as well, such as UnHerd and the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship. Last year, after buying the Spectator, he also came close to purchasing the Telegraph with the help of Ken Griffin, an American billionaire who is one of the Republicans\u2019 biggest donors.<\/p>\n Marshall\u2019s son Winston, a former banjoist for Mumford & Sons, is now a podcast host based in the US. At a recent press conference in Washington, he asked whether \u201cthe Trump administration would consider asylum\u201d for citizens affected by the UK\u2019s \u201cfree speech issues\u201d. Trump\u2019s press secretary said she would look into it.<\/p>\n The special relationship forming between the UK and US right is tainted by the stark imbalances in wealth and power. Take away the vast wealth of its financial centre in London and the UK is poorer than each of America\u2019s 50 states. The attempts by the British right to import panic about DEI and dynamism through Doge reflect a desire for inclusion and imagining that the UK and the US are in it together.<\/p>\n It\u2019s clear what Farage gets from this \u2013 the good graces of a US president who wants to be king and prizes sycophancy in his court above all \u2013 but the benefits to UK voters are naught. Farage has repeatedly declared his intention to give the British ruling classes a reality check through his success, implying that he alone knows what the UK wants. \u201cI don\u2019t think the Westminster politicians and journalists even get what\u2019s going on out there,\u201d he said in a recent TikTok video. But the references to DEI and Doge should remind us that he hasn\u2019t a clue either.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A popular maxim on the American right is that politics is downstream from culture. In the UK, it increasingly feels like politics is simply downstream from the US. With Reform UK ascendant in the polls, Nigel Farage \u2013 officially MP for Clacton, unofficially Donald Trump\u2019s emissary to the UK \u2013 is setting the terms of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11079,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[4310,4311,4314,4309,3131,4312,2082,4313,71,514],"class_list":{"0":"post-11078","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-attempt","9":"tag-copy","10":"tag-earle","11":"tag-farages","12":"tag-nigel","13":"tag-paste","14":"tag-policies","15":"tag-samuel","16":"tag-trumps","17":"tag-work"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11078\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}