
Read on, or view here: https://youtu.be/NVb_8qV8ZBE
It’s everywhere, in every sense, just now. While great swathes of Britain and Ireland have been pulverised by record-breaking gales, Donald Trump has hit the White House with a hurricane of terrifying new policies. And the new world disorder is something we’ve all got to grapple with.
Our latest deeply disruptive storm, with the odd tornado thrown in, spells out in miniature the headwinds facing the world following what feels like regime change in America.
Ok, the man was democratically elected, but the transition of power can hardly be described as smooth. Never mind throwing toys out of the pram, it’s more like he’s blown the thing up.
For example, there’s the broad consensus that humanity has been hacking away at the environment for years. Hence the international effort to cut pernicious emissions.
Indeed, killer wildfires that have ravaged Los Angeles, and the likewise lethal and unprecedented icy snap in Texas viciously validate the Paris Climate Accord.
But The Donald doesn’t count those bits, or any others. Instead he’s pulled out of the scheme and doubled down on his ‘drill, baby, drill’ mantra.
Nor is he fussed at being found guilty in a court of law of fostering insurrection. By egging on the rioters who stormed the Capitol in support of his false claim that the last election was stolen.
Far from it, in fact, as he’s now pardoned most of them, including many who actually attacked police officers. And others who’d be regarded by any reasonable measure as dangerous extremists.
One woman, who used to back him, has said letting people off is a ‘slap in the face’ to all the norms of justice.
She herself, she freely admits, fell for what she now describes as the ‘big lie’ and deserved to be punished for it.
But her protest is as menacing as a peashooter aimed at a tank.
Same as that of the Bishop of Washington, who begged the new President to have mercy: ‘On those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away.’
This reference to his threat to carry out the biggest deportation of undocumented migrants and asylum seekers in US history only served to make him snarlier than ever.
Of course how much of the fire and brimstone he’s breathing will translate into stuff that really happens does remain to be seen.
Former Tory leader William Hague wrote in the Times last week that his unpredictability means the next twelve months will be a rollercoaster of threats, confrontations, deals and summits.
‘It will be a year in which our attention span gets shorter, with every day bringing news of who is in favour or out of it, which country has a deal and which is in the cold.
‘In or out, up or down, fight or deal – this will be the daily diet of the coming year.’
For UK news outlets it’ll also be a perpetual distraction from things that impact more immediately on voters’ lives, like the cost of living and our crumbling public services.
Problem being, the Punch and Judy show in our little tent feels like small beer next to the death-defying displays in the big top.
Or maybe it’s comparable with the rubbernecking we’re all prone to when there’s been a particularly nasty pile-up on the other carriageway of the motorway.
But the show does go on. And while our Prime Minister probably hasn’t got a lot of time to spare for literary exploration just now, he’s clearly channelling this Chinese proverb:
‘When the winds of change blow, some people build walls and others build windmills.’
No question, he is going all out to stifle his instinctive liberal disgust at so much of what The Donald stands for – in the hope of maximising the money that could flow from Yankee coffers.
Trump was vaguely minded, last time he was in office, to give the go-ahead to the stonking great trade deal that Boris Johnson hoped would come out of his hardline Brexit bargain.
In the event his wheeze turned out not to be so much oven-ready as half-baked. But Keir Starmer’s living in hopes of finally, maybe, getting the green light from the orange whirlwind.
As a fallback, he’s also turning on all the charm he can muster to protect us here in Britain from the extra charges Trump’s threatening to levy on imports to the USA.
At the time of writing he’d got no further than waving it around. But it could land anywhere, any time. Or perhaps just as easily waft off again who knows where, who knows when.
The hard fact remains though we really can’t afford that kind of setback, as the British economy is not surging ahead as Starmer hoped. So much for ‘grow, baby, grow’.
Has to be said the picture’s not as gloomy as it was a week or so back, when the cost of government borrowing suddenly surged, and for while even Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ job looked on the line.
Also has to be admitted that much of that market volatility stemmed from the world’s wheelers and dealers getting the jitters over – you guessed it – Trump’s making it to the White House.
Now they’ve settled down a bit Ms Reeves is expected to have another go this week, promising traders a much needed leg-up via an expansion of Heathrow, Gatwick and Luton airports.
It’s been estimated that an extra runway at Heathrow alone would create thousands of new jobs and boost the nation’s coffers over the years by nearly a hundred and fifty billion pounds.
In addition it’d mean what’s been described by the union involved as a ‘generational opportunity for UK-based steel procurement’.
But the idea’s horribly controversial. Starmer himself opposed it, on green grounds, not so long ago.
And the Climate Secretary Ed Miliband, who’s spat nails at the very thought of it for years, will now find himself having to eat them.
But London’s Labour mayor Sadiq Khan is so furious about the additional racket as well as pollution that he could go so far as to take his own government to court over it.
If he does, he’ll have a fair few cabinet ministers more or less discreetly egging him on. No maybes here, there will be trouble ahead.
The baseline being that promises to stick by environmental targets through airplanes’ use of clean fuel don’t wash with many experts.
As far as they’re concerned the only way the aviation industry can avoid making matters worse is to cut back on flights. Period.
All of which leaves us Brits with our own scaled-down version of the debate raging Stateside, with our key players defying the planet protectors with the words ‘fly, baby fly’.
One of the most annoying things about the Make America Great Again movement is just how catchy its slogans are.
They don’t have to make any sense, or even be intended or likely to produce beneficial results. What matters is they stick in people’s minds.
That, after all, is what populism means.
コメント