DONALD TRUMP’S announcement that his unprecedented second state visit will happen in September gives us time to build opposition to it into a political campaign.
Fixation with the US, all too common in British media and among activists and commentators whose main activity is online, can lead to a “51st-state politics” which translates poorly into mobilising for meaningful action over here.
A state visit for Trump, though, brings together that leader’s international influence over the far right, the damaging economic impact of his trade policy and — most importantly — the question of our country’s long-term junior relationship to US imperialism into a focal point to demand alternatives.
In a couple of weeks swathes of England will be holding local elections, long seen as a potential watershed that could establish Reform UK as a serious player in the regions. No party is so compromised by US money and connections between its leader Nigel Farage and Donald Trump personally. The Trump connection can be hammered home on the doorstep.
But it must be raised to confront Labour candidates too, pressing them to put clear red water between themselves and the Labour government.
Is it right to offer a second state visit, something Trump and Keir Starmer are at pains to stress has never been offered to a US president before, to a leader attacking our trade and threatening to annex neighbouring countries?
More egregiously still, to a leader openly advocating the ethnic cleansing of Palestine?
British politicians are old hypocrites on Palestine, mumbling about commitments to a two-state solution while arming an Israeli state demolishing the basis for one through settlement expansion and territorial conquest. But they are now fawning on a US leader who doesn’t even pretend to respect international law or the national rights of Palestinians.
A local election issue? Certainly. It has already been demonstrated at the general election that Palestine solidarity candidates can mount serious, even victorious, challenges to Labour. Every councillor made to publicly break with the government over its complicity in the Gaza genocide raises the pressure for it to change course. Besides, from ethical investment policies to the need to spread the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign, there are lots of local ways to build solidarity with Palestine.
Palestine is the weakest link in the US-British imperialist alliance. Israel’s televised mass murder has outraged millions, and the movement to end the war has demonstrated huge scale and staying power (prompting intensified state repression, which it would also be useful to force councils to refuse to co-operate with). It is the point at which maximum pressure can be put on the government to distance itself from the US.
Once that question is opened up, in a world being thrown into turmoil by Trump’s blackmailing tariff tactics, there are plenty more reasons to make an independent foreign policy a prominent political demand. Subordination to Washington undermines our right to determine the nature of our relations with other countries, a growing problem given the long-term decline of the US economy and rise of the global South. It even, given the reach of US trade deal ambitions and its hostility to digital taxes, seriously restricts our domestic economic decision-making.
Opposition to Trump can unite key left struggles against the far right, against war and for greater state intervention in our economy.
Maximising this opportunity depends on left forces co-operating wherever there is common ground to do so, and bringing as many as possible into a united campaign against the state visit.
In 2016, attempts to tie opposition to Trump to opposition to Brexit undermined unity and weakened the campaign’s working-class appeal. Learning from the mistakes of the past means ensuring political differences within the left do not prevent a united front against US imperialism.
