You’re a tribal Labour supporter in your thirties, so of course you hate Donald Trump. He’s so objectionable, you think, as you look over your growing distended belly down at the trainers poking out of your boot-cut jeans. You spot yourself in the mirror. Your beard is flourishing, your hairline less so. Trump is so vulgar, so unsophisticated. If anyone suggested doing anything that might resemble something he’d do, you’d complain, you’d complain most vigorously on your Twitter account with a Golden Age Simpsons profile picture.
But unhappily for you, Keir Starmer, leader of your party, the man you affect to despise, has but one option to grow the British economy. To look at some of the things Trump is doing, and bend and twist our failing constitution, our dying state, to make it do the same.
Here’s one thing. Executive orders. Trump came to power and on his first day was issuing them by the dozen. Some of them were stupid, some of them destined for years of clogging up the courts before eventually being thrown out for good by the regime. Stupid and pointless, you might say. Stupid and pointless.
And yet some of them are not going to be challenged; some of them are going to be put into effect; some of them are going to matter. And Trump did some of this in a stadium, surrounded by his 70 IQ supporters, and started throwing pens into the crowd when he was done.
Dislike the content all you like, hideous dysgenic Labour supporter. But think about it practically. Trump knows that the norm in his country is divided government. He knows that congresses are getting less and less productive as time goes on, that aspects of the regime are as contrary all forms of change, all forms of growth, as they are in Britain. That the inbuilt opposition to doing things conventionally is so immense that it might not be worth doing. He knows, in advance, that he has less than four years now, and no hope — no hope — so far of passing any meaningful legislation. Not a chance, not a prayer.
That, in other words, all he has are the prerogative powers of the president. So he may as well use those powers, use them relentlessly, shamelessly, heedless of what others say and think and, to an extent, do. Because when you have one tool to hand, you can complain about how it isn’t perfect, or you can go looking for nails to hammer.
Who gets more done at the end of the working day?
The British prime minister, because of this fiction of monarchy, has — in theory — a lot more power than the American president. He has the confidence of the Commons, which means he can pass legislation. He is the only political, elected figure who has any control over the sprawling leviathan which is our civil service. He declares war and makes peace. He has immense prerogative powers.
Of course, the legislative route is more or less out. His party hate him; they hate economic growth, too. They each have fifty or so mentally ill people, retired or on disability, in their constituencies — people who will object every time someone even hints at turning this or that hideous, cracked car park or disused garage or industrial dry-cleaners into something useful and functional. They’ll freak out and send letters and emails. And so the MP, cowardly and pathetic and empty and evil as they are — they’ll object, too. So legislation is out. Prerogative powers are starting to look a little better.
These are powers the prime minister is, for reasons of pure presentation — pure ignorance — unwilling to use. But time is short, the country is dying, and it might be time to think about aping one man who, if he knows nothing else, knows a little about theatrics. The American president, much though you despise him. There is no time to waste.
If Starmer were serious — and here’s why we know he is not — he would on day one in Number 10 commissioned an absolute psychopath, heedless of polite opinion and regime orthodoxy, to give him a total audit of his, the prime minister’s, prerogative powers.
He would have arranged a series of buttons and levers — metaphorical — on his desk, and he would have started, in ratchet fashion, to pull them. Get rid of this consultation. Gut this judicial review. Fire these evil, obstructing civil servants, and put them through years of hell on their pensions. That’s what’s got to happen if the country is to survive.
Who do I have to sack to get this built? That’s what the prime minister would have said. He would have said it many times by now.
It says it’ll take twenty years. Who do I have to fire, what powers do I have to invoke, to get it done in five?
What infrastructure projects can I call in? What paths can the king’s word break? Who do I have to fire? Who do I have to fire?
Think theatrics, prime minister.
He could do it in a stadium, if he so wanted. He could do it in a stadium. And here, the announcer from the darts could say, is the piece of paper necessary to get that data centre built, prime minister. And the prime minister could sign it and hold it up and smile. He could get his picture taken.
Using compulsory purchase laws, using defence of the realm law, using left-over capacity from this or that law a century ago, we’re getting these thousand construction projects going right now. They’re going to be built because I, the prime minister, have ordered it. No one can slow it down. Anyone who does is sacked, on the spot. And good luck drawing that pension.
And if they’re not done by the time of the next election, these people — here are their names and pictures — will be under arrest. They’ll have all of their devices seized and searched. All their family’s devices.
Think theatrics, prime minister. Why not do something — one single thing — to save Britain from the grave, the funeral pyre?