The Collaborators
The real “threat from within” comes from those fake British patriots loudly cheering on attacks on our own country by a hostile foreign power
“What I worry about is the threat from within”, said US Vice President JD Vance on Friday, as he launched his latest attack on his country’s former allies.
Downplaying the threat from Russia, whose forces are currently committing war crimes against European citizens, Vance argued that the real threat to Europe now comes from attacks on “free speech” by its own governments.
Arguing that free speech is now “in retreat” in Britain, Vance also accused the UK of “backsliding” on democratic freedoms.
The hypocrisy of these claims barely need dissecting, coming as it does from a US administration that is now restricting access to independent news organisations, while pulping books it doesn’t agree with.
Nor should we take seriously any allegations of threats to democracy from a man who still refuses to accept the result of a democratic election his own party lost five years ago.
However Vance’s speech, which came a day after Donald Trump effectively surrendered large parts of another European country to Vladimir Putin, should still stand as a defining moment.
After many decades of alliance between our two nations, what both Vance and Trump are now making abundantly clear is that the United States Government is no longer our friend or ally, but a hostile foreign power.
Not only does the Trump administration no longer share Britain’s national interests, but it is actively seeking to sabotage them in favour of a country that within recent memory launched a chemical attack on our own soil.
For anyone claiming to be a British patriot, this should be a rallying moment, to finally stand up against those threatening our democracy and security.
Yet far from defending our national interests, many of Britain’s most self-proclaimed ‘patriotic’ voices are instead loudly cheering on those seeking to imperil them.
The Fake Patriots
Shortly after Vance concluded his speech, the useful idiots of the Trump-supporting British commentariat swung into action.
“Unbelievably good speech”, gushed GB News regular Adam Brooks.
“JD Vance dropping truth bombs” opined fake-academic (and GB News host) Matt Goodwin.
“We have an elite class in Britain & Europe that's more interested in petty virtue-signalling, eroding free speech in the name of "misinformation" & undermining our nations from within than defending Western civilisation” he Tweeted.
The irony of Goodwin accusing others of failing to defend Western civilisation, while publicly cheering on a US administration that is openly co-operating with its enemies, is quite something.
Yet such collaboration is not an outlier. Over the past year there has barely been a part of the British right that has not cheered on those seeking to attack and undermine this country.
Whether its Elon Musk’s dangerous misinformation about Britain which helped to incite racist riots on our streets, or Donald Trump threatening our Commonwealth and Nato allies, while imposing tariffs on our steel industry, most of the British right has continued to put themselves on the side of those attacking our country and continent, rather than those defending it.
Obviously this has included Nigel Farage, whose utter sycophancy to Trump and Musk has continued even after being publicly humiliated by them.
It has also included his deputy Richard Tice, who has been doing the rounds defending Trump’s capitulation to Putin.
However, it has even extended to the leader of His Majesty’s supposedly loyal opposition, Kemi Badenoch, who has also repeatedly declared herself a “huge fan” of Musk, while parroting his anti-British rhetoric in the House of Commons.
‘No Not That Sovereignty’
But what most unites all of those siding against the UK and Europe has been their previous stated interest in “sovereignty”.
Ever since the 2016 EU referendum, Brexiteer politicians and commentators have insisted that restoring national sovereignty should be the number one priority for the UK.
During the Brexit referendum Nigel Farage was typical of the Brexiteers in insisting that Britain must re-establish itself as “a proud, patriotic country” which “represents itself on the world stage”.
This supposed commitment to national independence was such a feature of their campaign that when former US President Obama intervened in the Brexit referendum in favour of Remain, the Brexiteer press and broader Leave campaign had a national fit about this “interference” in our politics.
Yet when Donald Trump and his acolytes attempt to interfere in our politics on a much larger scale, to the extent of openly endorsing and threatening to bankroll far-right parties across Europe, this supposed interest in maintaining our “sovereignty” is nowhere to be seen.
Nor is it anywhere to be seen in the case of Ukraine, where the likes of Tice, Farage and others appear perfectly comfortable with an autocratic regime in Moscow seizing European land.
Nor is it the case in Gaza, where Trump’s plan to seize “sovereignty” of the region, while ethnically cleansing it of its citizens, has been openly welcomed by Farage, who described it as “very appealing to me”.
Because the truth is that far from believing in the principle of sovereignty, Trump’s useful British idiots have only ever believed in the right of might. And if Trump has the might to seize Gaza and Greenland, while turning over Ukraine to Putin, then all the better.
Of course such hypocrisy should not surprise us. Brexit was always an attempt to sabotage the UK’s national interest, in favour of those who would profit from it and all the attempts to define this project as a patriotic one should always have been treated with the contempt they deserved.
Yet now that these same voices are openly in opposition to our national interest, in favour of a hostile US Government, and an even more hostile Russian president, it’s time that the rest of us made it clear exactly who they really are and what they really stand for.
What I think is almost never emphasised enough in the media is what unites Trump, Musk et al in the US and the likes of Farage and Tice in the UK (and their media cheerleaders). Their promotion of far right parties is often portrayed as solely about immigration, but for the billionaire class that support and run these parties it is about something else. It is about the weakening of the EU, the only western entity beyond the US itself, that has the power to fully regulate big business. Without it, states are far less able to legislate to protect workers, consumers, small businesses, competition or the environment. It is a corporate takeover disguised as a cultural project.
Adam, I am hugely impressed that you were able to keep calm and pen this eloquent & sober (and sobering) piece.
I myself find that a red mist descends on me just reading about Trump and his fascist bully boys with their vile and incoherent rhetoric and hypocritical inversion of the truth with almost every utterance.
It is clear that Europe including the UK has no choice but to get its act together to mobilise a cohesive trading bloc with concomitant self-sufficient military power to match the USA, China & Russia.
The new US administration is behaving way outside & beyond any vaguely acceptable norms, but it is entirely our own stupid & lazy fault to have put ourselves in this position.