The election of Donald Trump is the second act in a play that began on a smaller stage. The vote for Brexit was never a peculiarly British event, but it could be seen as such for as long as the abrupt dismissal of established elites that it involved was confined to a single country. Now, having demolished the dynastic order embodied in the Clinton and Bush families, Trump is bringing a changing of the guard to the most powerful country in the world. A profound shift that began in Britain has become an international movement. Democratic politics is in a revolutionary upheaval.
Having won out against the US media while deploying far smaller resources of money and organisation than those of his opponents in both parties, Trump is not going to be quietly assimilated into the elites he has dislodged from power. No doubt he will be constrained by American institutions. Though it will no longer be grid-locked, he will need the co-operation of the Republican-controlled Congress in some areas – if he goes ahead and withdraws from the Paris climate accords, for example – and elements of the old ruling groups will retain some capacity to curb him. Others will throw in their lot with the new regime. Lobby groups will be quick to form profitable links with Trump’s transitional team. Having no strategic plan, Trump himself may find it easier to modify existing policies – as he seems about to do with “Obamacare” – than scrap them altogether.
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