(Read on, or view here: https://youtu.be/VXsoyzI2oJI )
That slogan, in the run-up to World War Two, was the then government’s way of saying brace yourselves because it is what it is, however unpalatable. Which Trump’s triumph manifestly is to most of us Brits. In the face of which, the Prime Minister’s attitude is indeed stoicism on stilts.
Let’s get real here. Short of nuking America (not really an option), Keir Starmer has no choice but to take the advice of centrist Labour peer Harriet Harman, and ‘suck it up’.
In fact, the government’s been laying the groundwork for a potential Republican win for a long time. The dinner he had at Trump Tower last month was part of that insurance.
Starmer’s been rude about Trump in the past, and fellow guest David Lammy, now the Foreign Secretary, has called him a: ‘Woman-hating, neo-Nazi sympathizing sociopath.’
Bridges needed to be built with the notoriously grudge-bearing man then.
And when Lammy was offered a second helping of chicken it looked like it was working – though the question’s open as to whether this was sucking it up, or just plain sucking up.
But the brute fact is that The Donald will soon be the most powerful man in the western world. Given his terrifying policy platform, damage limitation has to be the way forward.
If that sounds suspiciously like appeasement, a policy that didn’t end well for Neville Chamberlain in 1939, then so be it.
The saying goes that if America sneezes the world catches a cold. That’s now looking inevitable, but a cold is a whole lot better than double pneumonia.
We’ll get a sense between now and the inauguration in January whether we’re looking at the worst or, hopefully maybe, least worst scenario.
Even neutral-minded commentators have stated that Trump did campaign like a fascist, but he’s often shown himself in the past to be all mouth and trousers.
Fingers crossed.
At the darkest end of the spectrum is his threat to deport eleven million illegal immigrants from the United States.
The truly terrifying aspect of this is its likely unfeasibility, and the possible fallback position.
It’s worth remembering that Hitler’s original plan was just to chuck the Jews out. Only later, when he grasped the impossible scale of the task, did he opt for extermination.
Then there’s Trump’s sweeping suggestion that he’ll end the Ukraine war overnight.
Because he and Vladimir Putin are pretty good chums it doesn’t take a lot of working out who’d look like the victor.
And if that conflict goes the Russians’ way, where will they turn their attention next? The groundwork’s already laid by the US for just letting them get on with it.
Once again, the spectre of Hitler casts a dark shadow over us all.
But with the outgoing President Biden calling for a lowering of the political temperature, other, less horrifying, scenarios start peeping over the horizon.
The Ukrainian leader has followed Starmer’s lead and made overtures to the incoming American President.
Part of Trump’s bluster is about his perpetual wish to look like a winner. And if the deal he tries to foist on Ukraine appears to align him with losing he might think again.
Much meanwhile has been made of his preparedness for office this time round. In his first term he was a novice in the ways of Washington, but he’s anything but now.
Meaning that his threat to at least partly pull up the financial drawbridge on imports to America looks likely to become reality in short order.
Given that the US is our largest trading partner we’re bound to feel the impact of, say, a ten per cent surcharge on anything we try to sell them.
The UK’s economy took a hefty hit thanks to Brexit, but many economists fear this could be a lot more damaging.
For all Starmer’s brave words about the special relationship with our Yankee buddies, everyone knows it is at its root transactional.
There’s also the nagging concern, talking of Brexit, that if Trump decides we’re not much use to him now that we’re outside the EU, that we’ll end up as Johnny no-mates.
Then again, Trump’s mother was Scottish, he already has a couple of golf courses north of the border and plans to open a second in Aberdeenshire next year.
The locals aren’t happy, but realpolitik suggests that inviting him for a state visit, and maybe letting him address parliament, might massage his ego – to our advantage.
There are risks either way, of course. When our former PM David Cameron asked then US President Barack Obama for help in the EU in-out referendum, it backfired.
Obama obliged by warning that the hoped-for huge Anglo-American trade deal to make up for loss of business in Europe wasn’t going to happen. And, to our cost, it duly didn’t.
Could things turn out better under Trump? It may be a runner, but on terms we might be loath to accept. Like, for example, giving the US drug giants an in on the NHS.
Then there’s climate change, referred to by Trump during the campaign as: ‘One of the greatest scams of all time.’
Presumably he’d been too busy to read about the flooding in Spain that killed more than two hundred people. Last week’s wildfires in California seemed to pass him by too.
Certainly, his answer to the latest data suggesting this year will be the hottest on record came via his message to those in quest of polluting fossil fuels: ‘Drill, baby, drill.’
Ironically, however, this could serve our own naked self-interest.
Joe Biden gave the green light to lots of green innovation. If Trump does rein all that back then the American backers of these projects might decide good old Blighty’s a safer bet.
Naked self-interest, by the way, seems to have been the deciding factor in so many millions of Yankee voters plumping for a twice impeached convicted criminal and sex offender.
Exit polls showed that two-thirds of them were unhappy about the US economy. Indeed, wages have flatlined there for decades.
And, rightly, or just as likely wrongly, they think Trump make them richer.
The indications are that billionaires like Elon Musk will reap a reward. But economists have severe reservations about the prospects for the population at large.
As for those geopolitical implications, it’s worth bearing in mind that Texas alone is nearly twice as big as Germany, and only a third of Americans even have a passport.
So it’s easy to see why they only had second thoughts about keeping out of World War One after a German U-boat attack killed some of their own.
Likewise, in World War Two, it took the Japanese onslaught on Pearl Harbour to drag them in.
With all bets off then about what turn American politics may or may not be about to take, ducking and weaving does look like our only option.
Two ways of putting this. One comes from the nineteenth century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche: ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’
The other’s to be found in that jolly little ditty sung by the chaps being crucified in the Python movie Life of Brian.
‘When you’re feeling in the dumps, don’t be silly chumps. Just purse your lips and whistle, that’s the thing. And always look on the bright side of life …’
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