It isn’t just the rules of football that Donald Trump is prepared to ride roughshod over to get what he wants - Andy Brown
For all its faults the United States has chalked up 250 years as a democracy where the rule of law and freedom of speech are valued. There have been plenty of flaws in the system, many examples of bad behaviour and even more examples of bad decision making.
Yet the idea that ultimately it is ordinary people who decide what happens and each individual is equal before the law and can speak their own mind is an important part of the national psychology and has provided an important example to other countries.
Until now. The extraordinary behaviour of President Donald Trump has put two and a half centuries of legacy at risk.
It is no longer possible to be certain that the mid-term elections in America will be free and fair and the result will be respected. If they look like producing a result that Trump doesn’t like there is a serious prospect that the President will decide that the public should have voted a different way and he is changing the result.
That is an astonishingly worrying statement to make. It amounts to saying that one of our nation’s key partners is at risk of becoming a Russian style democracy. You can vote but your vote will only count if it lines up behind a candidate selected by the President.
The evidence of a previous attempt to overturn an election result is rock solid. Joe Biden won the Presidency by gaining seven million more votes than Donald Trump. The scale of that victory number needs repeating because the badly defeated sore loser immediately proceeded to claim victory and to try and cling on to power.
Joe Biden got 81,284,666 votes in 2020 whereas Donald Trump got 74,224,319. Even on electoral college results Biden won by 306 to 232.
What happened next should chill us to the bone. Mike Pence, the Vice President of the United States, was rung by Donald Trump and asked to “find” him enough votes in marginal seats to change the result. That is not the view of some lefty critic. That is the sober view of the Republican Vice President who had served Donald Trump loyally for four years. The President told him to cheat.
Mike Pence refused. Trump took to the streets and told a mob he had won. He avoided specifically asking them to trash Congress but that’s what they did and in the process they killed law enforcement officials and caused immense damage.
Instead of condemning this lawless behaviour outright Donald Trump has demonstrated his approval by pardoning large numbers of those convicted for these violent crimes.
It is, of course, necessary to be extremely careful about the accuracy of the facts stated here. Because he is busy suing the BBC for billions for bringing two sections of his speech into close proximity in ways that over exaggerated his encouragement of the mob’s behaviour.
Anyone who makes even slightly exaggerated claims about Trump’s behaviour gets sued for billions and faces legal costs that are eyewatering even if they win. Powerful TV channels and social media outlets repeat his views.
That puts at risk another huge plank of the US political system. It isn’t freedom of speech if only those who can afford expensive lawyers can speak their minds and the rest have to shut up and listen. It isn’t genuine freedom of speech if the outlets for news have been bought up by billionaire friends of the ruler and alternative voices find it hard to get heard.
What is heard with increasing frequency from those who have captured the political machinery in America are attacks on the British government and our allies. Greenland isn’t safe. Canada isn’t safe.
Britain is constantly threatened with tariffs if our government dares to step out of line and try and control the tech billionaires. We are, for example, currently being bullied into paying more for drugs our people need on the NHS. In order to line the pockets of US producers.
In such circumstances we have to question everything about our existing alliance. Much has rightly been made about the need to stand up for ourselves on defence expenditure. With far too little emphasis on value for money and sensible choices about what we can best afford.
Yet there has been remarkably little questioning about what we do if the United States continues to copy the route of Vladimir Putin’s Russia and becomes a sham democracy and an enemy.
Trump has often told us that he thinks Putin is a genius. Routinely killing political opponents and shutting down all meaningful freedom of speech or political opposition is not the kind of wisdom that most people in Britain would wish to copy.
If there is any risk of Trump going even further down that route then we need distance and we need protection. It isn’t just the rules of football that Donald Trump is prepared to ride roughshod over to get what he wants. He treats election results equally casually.
Sooner or later Britain is going to have to break with Donald Trump. Better by far to stand strong now than to be complicit as functioning democracy in the States gets destroyed by his extreme behaviour.
Andy Brown is Green Party councillor for Aire Valley.