VIEW FROM THE UK LEFT
Trump’s Return a Disaster of the US and Planet – The Stop Trump Coalition is Back
By the Stop Trump Coalition
The return of Donald Trump is a disaster for the US and the planet – for women, for migrants, people of colour, for Muslims, for trans people and for everyone else his administration will target.
It is another boost to the global authoritarian right and the consequences could be dire for for the ongoing genocide in Gaza, the increased killings in the Occupied West Bank, and wars in Lebanon and Ukraine. It will embolden violent racist far-right movements seen on our streets in the UK this summer, targeting Muslims, refugees and asylum seekers.
It is another blow to efforts to limit global rising temperatures and climate catastrophe.
The UK Stop Trump Coalition was formed in January 2017, after Trump was elected for the first time and he declared a “Muslim ban”. Now Stop Trump is mobilising again, ready to oppose his policies once he takes office as well as any UK visits.
The US Democrats have again failed to defeat Trumpism, having refused to provide a real alternative on the economy or on Gaza. We cannot allow our own government to keep making the same mistakes.
It falls to us all – workers, civil rights activists, feminists, anti-racists, the climate movement, genuine progressives of all stripes – to organise a mass movement and push back, in the UK and across the globe, not only against Trumpism, but also the failed politics that keep it alive.
We plan to work in the coming weeks and months to build a broad coalition ready to respond to what comes next.
- You can sign up to take part in upcoming actions with Stop Trump Coalition here.
- This article was originally published by the Stop Trump Coalition on 6 November 2024.
With Trump’s win, we must redouble efforts to end the genocide in Palestine
By the Stop the War Coalition
Trump’s decisive victory in the US presidential election puts him in a strong position. Trump is a racist and Islamophobe, who has engaged in warmongering in his previous term and is a supporter of Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel.
He won for a range of reasons, perhaps most importantly economic discontent. His victory also owes much to the refusal of traditionally Democrat voters to endorse Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza and for extending the war on the Palestinians to Lebanon.
Harris lost the votes of Muslim and Arab Americans, as well as many others, on this issue.
However, Trump’s support for Netanyahu’s policy is clear. And for all his talk of wanting to stop wars, his record when he last held office shows that far from delivering peace, he doubled down on US war and proxy wars, in Syria, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Yemen.
He also ordered new nuclear missiles, ripped up nuclear treaties and demanded increased NATO military spending.
Trump talks of bringing peace to Ukraine, but he is committed to an increasingly hot war with China. He is also demanding that Nato allies increase their defence spending at the expense of funding areas such as health or education.
Trump has also talked of “two enemies” – outside and inside – and has vowed to defeat that “outside enemy” by mass deportations, reinstating his travel ban on people from predominantly Muslim countries and expanding it to prevent refugees from Gaza entering the US.
Stop the War convenor Lindsey German said:
“A Harris victory would not have stopped Israel’s genocide in Gaza or drive to war across the Middle East, but Trump’s racism, Islamophobia and bigotry, and his close relationship with Netanyahu could well enable Israel to pursue its desire for full control of Gaza and the West Bank.
“We face an extremely dangerous situation worldwide, with a growing arms race. We in the anti-war movement must redouble our efforts to end the genocide and wars in the Middle East. We also need peace in Ukraine, for the west to stop arming Ukraine, and for an end to the escalation of militarism and conflict aimed at China in the Pacific.”
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Three-quarters of Labour voters unhappy at Trump victory, poll reveals
Three-quarters of Labour voters are unhappy at Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election, latest polling has revealed.
A survey by YouGov found that 75% of Labour supporters were either fairly or very unhappy at the result in America, with only ten percent happy at Trump returning to the White House in January.
Amongst other parties, 79% of Liberal Democrat voters expressed unhappiness at the election result, compared to 51% of Conservatives and just 22% of Reform UK voters.
More than two-thirds of Labour supporters (72%) also thought Trump’s election would be bad for Britain, compared to just nine percent who thought his second term would be good for the UK.
However, Labour voters were divided on how much of an impact Trump’s election would have on their life, with 40% believing his return would not affect them very much and 40% thinking it would affect them either a fair amount or a lot. Only seven percent thought it would not affect them at all.
Liam Byrne: ‘Trump’s victory is a warning to Britain and Europe – fix inequality or populists will win’
In the end it was not even close. But the scale of President Trump’s emphatic re-election is not simply a shock, it is a warning to Labour and the European left. Unless we find ways to fix the yawning chasm of inequality that divides our nations, then populists everywhere will continue their onward march.
It will be a few days until we have time to inspect the details of Vice President Harris’ defeat. But there was one clear story about the last time President Trump sailed to victory. The places that were left behind by American growth, the places at the sharp end of growing inequality, were far more likely to vote for Trump.
But guess what?
The same dynamics hold true for the UK, France, and Scandinavia. Those places where the growth in wealth did nor keep pace with the national average were the places that voted for Brexit, Le Pen in France and the Far Right in Scandinavia.
In a seminal piece of political science research, authors Ben Ansell and David Adler reported, “the geography of wealth inequality offers a convincing explanation for the pattern of populist vote share.”
Trump’s re-election shows these forces are not dissipating. Indeed, they may be growing stronger. And the same effect was clear at the last general election here in Britain.
In a new analysis of the election results I looked at the relative increases in aggregate wealth since 2006/08 and the Reform vote in each region at the 2024 general election. What emerged is a clear pattern; those regions where wealth grew least – the North East, the East and West Midlands – voted more heavily for Reform. Where wealth growth was largest – in the South East – the Reform vote was lowest.
The lesson from Trump’s win
This has a clear message for Labour. Bidenomics-style investment is important, but it is not enough. Investment takes a long time to yield results, but voters’ patience is short – nor are voters feeling very optimistic about the future.
In fact new research by the Policy Institute at King’s College London and the Fairness Foundation, and shared on Tuesday night in the House of Commons, showed that here in the UK, people feel the gap in wealth between rich and poor is too big; that the richest in society are now more powerful than national governments – but voters do not think this will change by the end of the parliament.
These sentiments are a clear warning. If we do not fix this, we too will be in peril of the sort of populist surge that took Trump back into office. And the remedy is pretty clear.
Investment in our economy to grow our economy is mission critical. But just as important is a project that connects rising prosperity to those families and places that feel they have been left behind.
It must be a project that not only raises real incomes but actually helps improve the wealth levels of voters who have simply been left behind by the
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