Donald Trump has a lot in common with Brexit campaigners, but that doesn’t mean he can win
If you’re older you’re more likely to be pro-Trump and pro-Brexit. The young and better educated in the UK take Europe for granted. In America, they’re mostly immune to the appeal of Trump. Unfortunately, the old vote, and the young aren’t
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Say one thing for Donald Trump – he has a knack of being where the action is. There he was, on British soil, as the country was reverberating from the aftershock of its most momentous decision in decades, albeit for the somewhat less momentous purpose of celebrating a £200m refurbishment of his Turnberry golf resort.
“I love to see people take their country back,” he intoned, his “Make America Great Again” cap pulled down against the bright Scottish sun, noting the “great similarities” between the Brexit vote and his own campaign for the White House. There were of course the ludicrous, self-aggrandizing Trumpisms – fixing a country was like fixing a golf course, “and no-one can fix things like me.”
And as usual he mixed private and public business. Plunging markets and trouble for the pound? No worries: that was Britain’s problem. For Trump it means more foreign visitors to Turnberry and his other Scottish holdings, and more money flowing into his corporate coffers.
And many qualified people agree with him on the parallels, among them scores of those vilified “experts” who had failed to foresee either Trump’s rampage through the primaries or the British populace’s stunning decision to take its leave of Europe. But does what happened in Britain prefigure what’s going to happen in the US on 8 November? That’s a stretch.
Obviously there are similarities. The British vote, like the Trump campaign (and the Bernie Sanders campaign too) reflects a profound rejection of the establishment and governing elites that have lost touch with the public mood. Globalisation may be the mantra of the international great and good, but tell that to workers whose jobs have been outsourced, and who have to compete with immigrants for those jobs that remain.
The British heartlands resent the supposedly bloated powers of Brussels, poking around in every corner of national life. In the US the villain is Washington, with its experts who always know best, and a self-absorbed political class that has sold the country down the river, allowing it to be outmanoeuvred at every turn by devious foreigners.
In both countries (and many others in Europe and elsewhere) it’s a shared brew of the “three Ns”: Nationalism, Nativism and Nostalgia. Put your own country’s interests first, keep the immigrants out, and voila, a vanished golden age of harmony and prosperity will return. It’s perfect terrain for a populist, be his name Farage, Johnson, Sanders or Trump.
And the respective voting patterns in Britain and the US are closely aligned. If you’re older you’re more likely to be pro-Trump and pro-Brexit. The young and better educated in the UK take Europe for granted. In America, they’re mostly immune to the appeal of Trump. Unfortunately, the old vote, and the young aren’t.
But before you wonder whether you should maroon yourself on a desert island for the four years (or, God forbid, eight) of a Trump presidency, take heart. Despite their obvious parallels, Brexit and the US presidential election are very different animals. The patterns of British and US politics are not always the same.
Take immigration, the issue which undoubtedly won the day for Leave. Yes, it’s a burning issue in the US as well, what with the proposed Great Wall of Trump along the Mexican border, and the candidate’s promise to throw out the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants, probably his biggest selling points for supporters.
In fact it may now be rebounding against him. Amazingly, for a non-American at least, the main headline in The New York Times on Friday was not the British vote to leave Europe, but a Supreme Court deadlock that scotched a plan by President Obama to save millions of illegal immigrants from automatic deportation.
The decision is a crushing setback for Obama. But it will have two other effects, both beneficial to Hillary Clinton. First, the high court’s non-ruling goes some way towards neutralising Trump’s claim that the Obama administration has granted amnesty for illegals. Second, it will surely help Clinton by solidifying the determination of Hispanics to put a Democrat in the White House.
And herein lies another reason why America is not Britain. In the US, the proportion of white voters, the wellspring of Trump’s support, is much smaller, while the Hispanic share of the electorate, galvanised by the property tycoon’s rants, is steadily growing. All other things being equal, Trump will have to double Mitt Romney’s 2012 support among Hispanics. Some chance. And that’s to say nothing of Trump’s problems with women, problems that Brexit did not share.
Then consider the respective protagonists. The EU is a deeply unpopular institution that has gravely mishandled the euro crisis and the flow of refugees from Africa and the Middle East. Right now it’s last club many people would dream of joining. Indeed, had each of the 28 EU members been offered an in/out referendum on Thursday, it’s a safe bet Britain wouldn’t have been the only one to quit.
That it has done so moreover testifies not just to exasperation over immigrants, globalisation and the rest, but to long centuries of ambivalence over its relations with the landmass that begins 22 miles from Dover. Politics is the daughter of history, and history is the daughter of geography.
Donald Trump plans to ride these trends to the Oval Office. But Hillary Clinton ain’t Brussels – and in his way, he’s as unpopular as the EU, disapproved of by two thirds of Americans, more unpopular even than Ms Clinton, that perfect specimen of the establishment elite. A few days ago his campaign seemed to be cratering, bereft of money and organisation, and a mutinous party was suffering an acute case of buyers’ remorse. Trump’s coherent and powerful attack this week on Clinton (aided by those teleprompters he used to deride) has helped steady the boat. But if Brexit was a long shot, a President Trump remains a longer one still.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments