When I was little I enjoyed the tales of Hans Christian Anderson. One that stuck in my mind was the Emperor’s new clothes. Two con men weavers convince the Emperor that they are making the most perfect new outfit for him. They claim to weave a magical cloth visible only to the wise, but in reality, they work on empty looms. The emperor, along with his court and the entire town, pretends to see the nonexistent clothes out of fear of appearing foolish, until a child points out the obvious truth: the emperor is naked.
The whole ridiculous pageantry and general fawning put on for US president, Donald Trump, this week fits perfectly with the obsequious court and local citizens in Anderson’s story who refused to tell the Emperor he was naked. Like the modern Truman Show, the president was given an extravagant military parade that had everything except any people to observe it. I mean the whole point of rulers’ military parades is to impress the masses with your power and control over them.
You wouldn’t see Putin or Xi spending huge amounts for such a jamboree without any people lining the streets. But the Don was given a parade that took place totally inside Windsor Royal Park. Only a few deer and squirrels might have caught a glimpse of Trump in the royal carriage. I suppose Trump does not mind since he has constructed his political success on managing the TV spectacle where you do not need a live audience.
A spectacle fit for President Trump
Nobody has yet estimated how much all this pageantry cost. Whenever the RMT go on strike we get an immediate ludicrous estimate of millions of pounds. Ah, but this is soft power that will convince the Don to go easy on us over tariffs and help convince him to let us become junior partners in the USA’s big tech and military complex. It shows us how jolly useful the monarchy is to Britain. Look, we are not just subsidizing an already super rich family but they are really earning their keep.
When it is a question of getting rid of the two child benefit cap there is no money because hard choices have to be made. I am sure we could also find socially useful things for all those soldiers and horses to do – what about deploying them to improve the environment or providing fun for local kids (free horse rides?). What it does show is that there are areas of state spending where big cuts and savings could be made. Britain does not need to preen itself as a military power able to punch above their weight among the super powers. Pomp could be cut without hurting anyone or any horse…
Of course the reason there was no public parade was the thousands who were likely to turn out to boo and oppose him and to point out that the emperor has no clothes, that he has constructed his own world of lies and false news.
On Wednesday there was a decent turn out for a demo during a working day. A large number of organizations, campaigns and radical groups marched through central London – far from Windsor or Chequers. The Stop Trump team had done a good job of mobilizing people outside of the narrow periphery of the radical left. Although there was the usual hand out of hundreds of Socialist Worker authored placards many people had brought their homemade placards or costumes. These were politically sharp and witty.
At Chequers, Starmer was on his best fawning form. During the press conference he deferred utterly to his American friend. Suddenly the ex-marxist and atheist had become a bit of a Christian of the Church of England variety. He was careful not to differentiate himself from Trump on Gaza which is pretty easy since he refuses to call it genocide or to take any practical action to fully block arms or boycott anything. Conveniently British recognition of Palestine is scheduled to come after the Trump visit.
Britain does not have to wait for some international coordination to make this symbolic turn – Spain and Norway just announced it. Nobody mentioned the apartheid regime is currently massacring the Palestinians in their total takeover of Gaza City. Any such reference was strictly off limits.
The Emperor’s lies
American journalists often make long lists or even books full of Trump’s lies. These are not just exaggerations but proper whoppers. True to form he gave us some in the press conference. Apparently he had no idea of who Mandelson was despite film of him shaking his hand in the Oval Office and the latter’s involvement in tariff negotiations. He probably saw him at one of Epstein’s parties but was probably otherwise occupied at the time. In any case, all that Epstein stuff is false news and Trump ‘dropped him years ago’.
Sadiq Khan, to his credit, has not only called out the genocide in Gaza, but unlike Starmer, has actually stood up to Trump. So Trump lied again on the plane home, falsely saying that he had made sure he was excluded from all the state visit action. He also falsely claimed crime was going through the roof in London. Khan, like Ed Davey, LibDem leader, had declined to participate in the state visit. In his lies, Trump thinks he is always in control.
We know that Trump is obsessed with the media so a political priority for him was to deal with the sacking of Jimmy Kimmel – a satirist with a late night show that regularly criticizes Trump. Everyone and his dog knows he was sacked for remarks he made about Charlie Kirk’s murderer. Americans had seen an interview with Trump’s nominated TV regulator where he said the network needs to deal with Kimmel or by god he would. Yet at Chequers, Trump just said that he had lost his job because he was a loser and have terrible ratings. For Trump politics is just about money, deals and ratings – values, ideas or progress do not get a look in.
When an Australian journalist asked the obvioius question about how come he was the first president to make so much money out of his businesses Trump got very angry – this guy was telling him he was naked. Yet another shameful example of the way Starmer goes the extra mile for his friend Trump is the way this journalist was refused accreditation at the Chequers’ press conference It seems to be the case that when Trump tells Starmer to jump his only response is to say how far sir?
What about all those business deals?
Here it is worth quoting at length from a specialist, Marianna Mazzucato :
“This week’s US-UK tech prosperity deal is an example of tech investment being structured poorly. US tech firms have pledged to invest £31bn in the UK, including OpenAI, Microsoft, Nvidia and Google, while the government refuses to rule out scrapping the digital services tax. It will lead to the outsourcing of more AI capacity across public institutions and the wider economy to US tech firms. With Labour promising to “mainline AI into the veins” of the country, we must ask: are we building AI capacity for Britain or Silicon Valley?
Rather than “cut the red tape” fetishism, Labour needs AI governance that generates British capabilities and public value. The TUC argues that workers must have a role in shaping AI. As I’ve written recently, Britain should explore public funding models akin to the BBC licence fee – collectively supporting AI systems serving public purposes rather than commercial imperatives.
When citizens see deals with tech companies while local jobs fail to materialise at resource-heavy datacentres, the political costs are inevitable. Smart AI governance – with workers’ voices, public ownership stakes and visible benefits for communities – offers a positive radical and Labour vision.”
We could add that the actual number of jobs has been much exaggerated. Building data centres does not create new permanent jobs and it is not clear how many of these jobs will be in the most deprived areas. There are also issues about the environmental impact of these huge data centres in terms of their demand for both electricity and for water. It is ominous too that plans for a digital company tax may well be watered down due to the collaboration with US capital. Then the new small nuclear reactors still leave the problem of dealing with the nuclear waste which is never factored in and will become the problem of future generations. Will anyone want one near their homes?
The boss of Palantir UK on BBC radio 4’s Today programme suggested that his company’s significant investment in the NHS data operations was all good – it was shortening waiting times. He conveniently forgot the huge advantages of access to the one of the world’s biggest set of data owned by the NHS (and by us). Giving over these operations to Palantir is still outsourcing by any other name – which means we are paying profits to its share holders rather than keeping it in house and saving that money for patient care.
The other wing of Palantir’s investment is with the ministry of defence, developing weapons systems. Rather than developing socialiy useful production this government thinks the key to growth is joining the US military/industrial complex as a junior partner. It is also strongly tied into Israel’s war machine in Gaza and has been the target of many campaigns by pro-Palestinian activists,
Big US pharma is lobbying hard to dilute the NHS drugs purchasing policy which limits some of the profits the drug companies can make. We should take up once again what was a regular motion won at Labour Party conferences pre-Blair, for common ownership of the drug companies. The pandemic showed that we should be in control of drug production and this fits into our support for a free health service.
US big tech is also nearly always against unionization. Has the Labour government established any sort of ground rules guaranteeing trade union rights or representation in these companies? I think not.
A gift for Farage but no tariff cuts for Starmer
Starmer made sure Farage was excluded from the banquet, but Trump did him a favour by supporting his line on migrants, telling Starmer he should use the military, like he has, to stop migrants. He also repeated another outright lie that migrants destroy countries from within – a variation of the racist great replacement theory. You could have fooled me.The USA, after the genocide of the native peoples, became one of the most dynamic capitalist economies precisely because of migrants. Most of the press the day after led with his advice about using the military.
Starmer’s response was not to remind Trump that these are desperate people with the right to claim asylum and cannot be defined as illegal under international law. No, he just said that he was moving with pace and determination to defend ‘our’ borders and that we were going to use former military bases to detain all of them.
It was much mooted before the visit that a better deal on steel tariffs could be made – reducing it from the 25% rate. All the expense of the pageantry was to achieve that sort of objective. But Trump made it quite clear in an interview with US TV that although he liked Britain the tariffs were bringing in a lot of money. One of his aides repeated this position, that the state visit did not change that reality.
Some of the press is spinning the state visit as a success. They seem to think avoiding a Zelensky style outburst is a diplomatic triumph. The reality is different. These trade deals do not guarantee real growth or even less a productive sustainable economy. They certainly will do little to change the systematic inequality that our economy produces. Nothing here will change the reality that food prices are still accelerating and too many people are struggling to put food on the table. On the other hand, the visit certainly helps Trump in the US present himself as a world leader being feted by one of its oldest allies.
In Han Christian’s story it is two children who point out the obvious that the Emperor is naked. On Wednesday 13 September thousands did this on the streets of London. Thanks to everyone of them, you stood against the craven fawning of Starmer.