A most sobering conversation with a transatlantic cousin a few weeks ago has left me scrabbling for hope. I pleaded my case as a European - surely Donald Trump would open up the borders for a highly educated young British man deeply conversant with American culture. What else would those misspent summers spent watching Call of Duty commentary videos on YouTube have been for?
Alas, he informed me with a hardly concealed note of pity, the immigration restrictionism of a Trump Presidency is likely to be universal. We would see no return to Johnson-Reed. I am to be cut adrift, suffering under the Gray-Starmer nightmare while my North American kin enjoy rapid economic growth and unprecedented liberty.
As an increasing number of European nations turn to some version of the ‘hard/far/extreme’ right, alongside a Trump presidency, the case for trans-national cooperation against what remains of the social democratic tyranny will become unanswerable. The Dragon has already sketched out, in these very pages, the necessity of European co-operation to decisively solve the migrant crisis. To secure a sustainable programme of deportations, it will be necessary for the ‘Global North’ to use it’s economic power, and if needs be, military power, in tandem, to force the ‘Global South’ to accept returns.
There has never been a concerted international effort to force the Indian government to tighten it’s deliberately loose laws to prevent it’s citizens from scamming Western pensioners over the phone. The Digital India bill is likely to be watered down - this should be provoking international outcry. Britain acting alone does not have the power to cow the Indian Government; just as the Canadian government has to accept assassinations on it’s own soil. But hypothetical trans-national European/American bodies, specifically excluding ‘international organisations’ like the UN or WHO that have been captured by the ‘Global South’, would still have enough combined firepower to exert control over domestic laws in large countries like India. It is time to stop complaining about demands for ‘climate reparations’, and to start making a positive case for how the international right can aggressively protect it’s population’s interests.