Mark my words: This is how to hit the ground running

In his latest column, PopCon Director, Mark Littlewood, takes a look at Donald Trump's first week back in the White House. 

 

If you want a definition of "hitting the ground running" then take a quick glance at President Trump's first few days back in office.

flurry of executive orders has set the direction of travel for his second administration and has reset how the United States will operate.

The DEI industry has been crushed. America has detached itself from climate change lunacy. Securing US borders has been declared not just a priority but an emergency. And while he's been at his desk, with pen in hand, why not rename the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America and release all secret files relating to the assassinations of JFK, RFK and Martin Luther King?

Add on to this a determination to diminish Chinese influence over the Panama Canal and an insistence that the war in Ukraine must end and you certainly conclude that the 47th President can multi-task. This is a sharp contrast to the previous administration. The 46th President could barely talk in coherent sentences.

The takeaways for us on this side of the pond are many and varied. 

The first is that many things seem impossible until they become inevitable. What's surprised me has been how the slaughter of so many sacred cows has elicited such limited opposition. Trump appears not merely to have defeated is opponents electorally but ideologically too. The Democrats don't look like they are going to put up much a fight on many of the battlefields Trump has chosen.

The second is that trimming and tacking is not needed for political and electoral success. The Trump approach has not been to water down some environmental targets or cap the spread of diversity, equality and inclusion policies but to strike them out entirely.

Thirdly, running against the system and promising to completely rewrite it is a winning formula.

Managerialism is close to being electorally dead.

For those wishing to replace this disastrous UK government as soon as possible, it seems to me that the real lessons are to be completely unambiguous and unapologetic about what you stand for (and against) and - as the election and victory approaches - make sure you have the equivalent of 100 executive orders to roll out on day one.

Americans may well have saved themselves by their own actions. Let's hope they've saved the rest of the West by their example.

Keep the flag of freedom flying.