Two things happened last week which, when taken together, act as a warning to leaders at every level of society.
On Thursday, the day before Holocaust Memorial Day, in the spirit of learning from history, the communities secretary announced an increase in funding to tackle hate crime.
Speaking at The Anne Frank Trust Annual lunch, Sajid Javid told the audience: ‘Holocaust Memorial Day is a stark and important reminder of what can happen when hate and intolerance spirals out of control and specific groups are targeted simply because they are different.’
Meanwhile, Theresa May was on her way to America to be the first leader to greet President Donald Trump.
The prime minister went in the hope a trade deal could be signed between the US and the UK, something that would strengthen her hand vis-a-vis Brussels in future Brexit negotiations.
Having collectively shot ourselves in the foot, Britain is in desperate need of a crutch and the Government is hoping Trump’s America or China or anyone outside of Europe will help us hobble out of the EU with our heads held high.
But the tension between Mrs May’s cloying approach to the new American president and the spirit and letter of the communities secretary’s speech to the Anne Frank Trust is a glaring one.
President Trump is a man who has repeatedly contributed to - and fed off - the very hate and intolerance Mr Javid was referring to, and he makes a point of targetting ‘specific groups’ because of their differences.
Throughout the presidency of Barack Obama the millionaire reality TV star turned alt-right agitator spread racist rumours Obama was not born in America and repeatedly demanded to see his birth certificate.
During his election campaign, Trump also called for Muslims to be banned from entering the country, talked of building a wall on the Mexican border to keep out ‘illegal immigrants’ (code for Latinos) and bragged about sexual assault.
And now, as he moves into the second week of his presidency, he seems determined to prove his racist and misogynistic statements were more than just populist rhetoric designed to shock and win airtime.
Among a slew of egregious executive orders, the Republican president has attacked women’s right to choose, pushed for a ban on nationals coming from seven Muslim-majority countries, and demanded the ‘immediate construction of a physical wall on the southern border’.
Mrs May’s attempts to win over this man are embarassing and ill-conceived to say the least. More importantly, they go against Mr Javid’s speech and have occurred in the shadow of Holocaust Memorial Day.
Now, before I continue, a sidenote. I realise I am in danger of breaking Godwin’s law and engaging in reductio ad Hitlerum, so in the interests of clarity I’ll say this: Trump is no Adolf Hitler.
However, he is a figure straight out of the 1930s and one whose rhetoric carries clear fascistic echoes. To deny this would just be ahistorical and tone deaf.
Back then, the right was on the march. Hitler, Mussolini, Franco – they all rode a wave of populism created by the collapse of one political order in the First World War, the economic crisis of the 1930s and a pervasive fear of communism.
The citizens of Europe, many of whom had very real concerns, bought into the “Make X Great Again” rhetoric of petty, insecure men who claimed the establishment had allowed ‘the people’ and ‘the nation’ to be brought low by Jews and communists.
There are plenty of echoes of this same thinking in the new transnational far right. Across Europe and America, you hear the same familiar cry from the likes of UKIP, Trump, France’s National Front etc.: the corrupt, liberal establishment has betrayed ‘the people’, weakened ‘the nation’ and coddled minorities who are undermining ‘our’ way of life.
What has this got to do with local government?
Since the Brexit vote, the UK has found itself heading towards an economic cliff and is desperately searching for friends abroad to stop it going over the edge. Looking to avert this, Mrs May seems keen to join the axis of demagoguery as a junior partner.
Councils up and down the country are also in a tight corner. They are facing the end of the local government grant and are going to struggle outside of the EU. This means many of them are looking further afield for investment and markets.
Mrs May’s strategy – part realpolitik, part ideological commitment – should not be copied. Council leaders heading abroad should be more selective with who they do business with than the PM.
Getting into bed with tyrants and demagogues is a bad idea, however desperate you might be. Moral questions aside, they cannot be trusted and they are unpredictable – two qualities that will almost certainly lead you to getting screwed.
