The ‘Guardian’ Are Beginning To Feel The Winds Of Change

It's always fun when 'Guardian' staffers go out amongst the people of this fair land...

As strange as it may sound, Rugeley felt like a good place to feel the global shock waves from the inauguration of Donald Trump – dutifully attended, let’s not forget, by the Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos – and to find out what people thought about his style of politics. Last summer, the result in the local constituency of Cannock Chase saw the first stirrings of a change that has since gripped national politics: Labour and the Tories finished on 36% and 29% of the vote respectively, while the Anglo-Trumpers of Reform UK took a very impressive 27%.

And if it were run right now, Labour would be lucky to get into double figures, wouldn’t they? 

As this shift has played out, there have been recent suggestions that any British appetite for Trump-style politics is bound to be limited.

Well, maybe you shouldn’t believe all you’re told.  

In Rugeley, it did not feel like that.

See? 

Our first stop was a bustling community centre, where a parent and toddler group was happening next to a weekly lunch for pensioners – and we got a sharp sense of how the quiet privations and disappointments of 21st-century English lives have opened people to the specious promises of hard-right populism.

What 'hard - right populism', John?  

We had a long conversation with Emma and Cian, a couple who had come with their baby. “This is a very, very quiet town – it always has been,” she said. “Not a lot goes on around here … and nothing lasts long.” To most people, Cian told me, the arrival and eventual winding-down of the Amazon warehouse had barely registered. He didn’t know anyone who had worked there. “It’s just a big blue building at the end of the town that’ll be gone soon.” I wondered: when the government changed last year, did it make them feel any different about the future? “No,” said Emma, wearily. “We don’t expect anything out of what we’re told.”

Not exactly the fires of revolution, but maybe those aren't too far off... 

What if a Trump-type figure promised to make Britain great again? She laughed, and glanced at her partner. “We’ve got different opinions on that,” she said. “I kind of like what he’s doing. I wish more would be put into the UK. I think we need someone with a bit more of … an oomph about them.”

Oh dear! Seizing on a brown face like a drowning man seizing a lifebelt, John tries again:

Nearby, we met Kenan, a Turkish-born Just Eat driver – forced into the world of endless delivery shifts, he said, when his IT business went bust during the pandemic. When I mentioned Trump, his face lit up.

“He’s the man,” he said. “He’s the man.” “He’s reckless,” he told me, and he was not using that word as a pejorative. “He does what he says, not like other politicians. They say they’re going to do something with the economy, and they don’t do it. But Donald Trump does.” Did it feel strange to be bigging up someone so set against immigration? “As a foreigner,” he said, “I’ve seen people only using the system. And I’m working 12 or 13 hours a day.”

Heh! And why shouldn't he be aggrieved by that, John? Why should he feel solidarity with them? 

As darkness fell, we sat in a car park, listening to the first Trump speech of inauguration day with one of the car windows down.

The locals probably thought you were dogging…. 

A white transit van pulled up next to us: inside was a father and his three kids. He began telling us the details of his life before we even asked about them. “My dad was in world war two,” he said. “When he left the navy, he had three cement wagons, and he put the concrete in Spaghetti Junction in Birmingham.” His daily existence, by contrast, was a mess of financial hardship, the impossibility of combining childcare with work, a dire shortage of mental health provision and the impossibilities of the benefits system. Four days a week, he said, he hardly ate. He was now 50: he had voted only once in his life, and it was for Reform UK. “Some of the things Trump says, some of the things Elon Musk says, some of the things Reform UK say – they sound good,” he said. “But it’s action you want in this country.”

I fear one day we'll see it, and it won't be something John will be rushing out to cover.... 

Sorry, Progressives, No Takesy Backsies…

Paul Friedrich, 16, could not wait to cast his first ballot and had no doubt which German party had earned his support in the watershed European elections. “Correct, I voted AfD,” he said proudly in the bustle of the commuter railway station in Brandenburg an der Havel, an hour from central Berlin. The far-right Alternative für Deutschland made particularly stunning gains on Sunday among young voters.

For the first time in a national poll, 16- and 17-year-olds could cast their ballots – a reform that had been strongly backed by left-leaning parties. After overwhelmingly supporting the Greens five years ago, Germans under 25 gave the AfD 16% of their vote – an 11-point rise – helping place the party second behind the opposition CDU-CSU conservatives and well ahead of the Social Democrats of the chancellor, Olaf Scholz.

Whoops! That backfired spectacularly, didn't it?  

...his concerns echo those of many teenagers and twentysomethings in town: fears of war spreading in Europe, inflation, economic decline, “unchecked” immigration and, above all, violent crime, which they say is rampant when they use public transport or hang out in public spaces at night.

A familiar refrain, the sort of urban petty crime that impacts the youth more so than the adult voters is driving the 'lurch to the right' as this is being described.  

“A lot of things are moving in the wrong direction with the current government,” Friedrich said, referring to Scholz’s increasingly loveless centre-left-led alliance. “I want to change things with my vote – I want the AfD to shape that.”

And the left have helpfully tied the noose around their own neck and shown you how to kick the chair they are standing on! Oh, if only there was a German word to describe how I felt reading this article...

Brushing aside party scandals and attempts to whitewash the Nazi past, Konstantin and his friend Leonard, 18, also voted AfD. “When I go out I get insulted and even spat on by, let’s just say, non-Germans – those aren’t German values,” Leonard said. “If refugees come here and work and behave and leave me alone that’s fine, but if not, they should go home.”

It seems the education system in Germany hasn't been totally conquered by the progressives. Unlike ours. 

What do these 'new Germans' think about this? 

Noura Abu Agwa, a 24-year-old refugee from Damascus, said she and her mother also felt increasingly unsafe in town, but blamed the strong presence of the far right. “When I arrived I was wearing the hijab but I got harassed so I took it off,” she said. “I feel bad for my mom because she’s still wearing it, and once she was walking in the street and a man stopped her to shout at her. She was so confused because she only speaks Arabic.”

QED. 

My first thought after hearing about the attack was "I hope people react rationally and don't get aggravated"

A rather baffling response to yet another Islamist attack on free speech. Thankfully others are beginning to react more rationally:

A 74-year-old pensioner, who travelled to Mannheim from the neighbouring Rheinland-Pfalz state to pay her sympathies to the victims, said she had 'goosebumps' ever since she heard about the attack. 'This is not normal that something like this happens. I immediately thought yesterday that it could happen to my child, to anyone. I can't understand this,' she told MailOnline. 'One should live in peace without attacking another person with a knife. Someone like that is not human to me. No one has the right to hurt others.'

She gets it. 

One member of the public, who prefers to stay anonymous, came to the market square in Mannheim today with a home-made sign saying 'Democracy - no Islamism'.The 35-year-old told MailOnline: 'It was another attack on someone who was using his democratic right to free speech. It is bad that something like this happens and it's happening more often, especially at the hands of Islamists. 'I have experienced today how it affects a lot of people here. They want to talk about, but many are afraid. Islamistic terror is coming closer and closer and now it has arrived in Mannheim.'He said he had thought about whether it was a good idea to come up to Mannheim from his nearby hometown to voice his concerns about Islamism, but ultimately decided to put his trust in the police to keep him safe. 'But I'm really scared of the future, of what is yet to come,' he added. While some people, including Muslims, came up to him and said they were sorry to hear about what happened, he said he also encountered people who looked 'as if they want to strangle' him.

I expect the others did too, they just hid it better.  

Roland said he was 'a bit scared' to share his opinion openly after Islam-critic Michael Stuerzenberger was attacked, but he continued: 'We reap what we sow. Who doesn't fight for their rights and freedoms will be a victim and will be under Sharia law.'

Amen, Roland. 

'It really hit close to home. There was only hate and violence behind it, nothing rational, nothing human, just rage,' Leo, who moved to the city for university, said.

And meanwhile, in the UK, it seems the police are waking up a little bit: 

A bit too little, too late, but still welcome.