Anti-Trump protest, Edinburgh. Image, Adam Ramsay
At the Scottish Independence Convention last month Elaine C Smith used a term that may become useful in conceptualising this epoch: “Trump-Brexia”. It’s increasingly clear that what we are seeing is no short-term shock soon to be reversed, but a fundamental change in the Anglo-American order towards a capital-N Nationalism where British and US elites grab what they can while the weak suffer what they must.
It’s difficult to underestimate the importance of this shift. Niall Ferguson, the pro-Empire historian, used to talk about ‘Anglobalisation’: the Anglo-American order led first by the British Empire and then succeeded by the American Empire, which constructed the rules of global political economy over the past 200 years. The key here is the world ‘rules’: while always rigged and carried out with gross hypocrisy, they sought to establish a set of political and economic red lines that were more or less universal. Especially after the post-war settlement, punitive tariffs was a no-no and collective punishment based on religious discrimination would generally mean Washington, and the international institutions it dominates like the IMF, World Bank, Nato, the UN, would put you on the naughty step.
