The sole Labour parliamentarian invited to Donald Trump’s inauguration was the maverick peer Maurice Glasman, the founder of Blue Labour. Glasman received his invitation through JD Vance, the new vice-president, and he also attended Trump’s pre-inauguration rally in Washington on 19 January in the company of Steve Bannon, who was the White House’s chief strategist in the early chaotic months of the first Trump administration and has since reinvented himself, after spending four months in prison in 2024, as a podcaster. Perhaps Gary Lineker will offer him a gig.
As Glasman sees it, the three barons of Maga Square are Vance, Bannon and Elon Musk. Bannon, who has vowed to crush Musk – in part because Musk favours the H-1B visa scheme which attracts talented migrants to America – occupies the left side of Maga Square and Musk, the oligarch and transhumanist whom Bannon calls “truly evil”, the right. “Vance is more aligned to the Bannon side of the square but he’s being very well behaved and respectful,” Glasman told me. I asked him what the Maga crowd thinks of Keir Starmer’s Labour. “They love Brexit and want the UK to be their fundamental European partner but they’re not feeling it from London. They think the EU is a progressive death hole which is trying to ban the populist right in Europe.”
Content from our partners
