Britain and Israel: Two democracies resisting the tug towards autocracy
Keir Starmer, prime minister of the United Kingdom, is a politician who respects the democratic tradition. He is the epitome of an old-fashioned English gentleman – tight-lipped, well mannered and courteous, but abysmally lacking in insight into the gangster mentality of the autocratic politicians he finds himself pitted against on the world stage.
Starmer was brought up to respect the law and to play the game according to the rules. He fails to see in Donald Trump someone who has only contempt for the law and is obsessed with acquiring wealth and power by any means. Trump will stop at nothing to wield the immense military and economic power which the presidency of the United States has conferred on him, in order to get what he wants.
Trump is not only an autocrat but a bully. He teases, threatens and coerces those whom he perceives as vulnerable until he has reduced them to a state of sycophantic submission. The conventional advice to the victim of playground bullying is to stand up to the bully but this is useless when the bully has the military and political might of the state at his disposal. After all, which democratic politician would be willing to make a stand on principle at the risk of weakening his own country’s economy and losing power to a leader who hates democracy and values wealth above all else?
Like his ideological kinsman Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump has imperialistic ambitions. The British Empire has long since vanished and today the very idea of Britain expanding into the territory of another sovereign state in order to enrich its coffers at that country’s expense is anathema to most citizens of the United Kingdom. Now it is the United States, once defender of the people’s rights, which has succumbed to the siren song of wealth and territorial expansion. Political leaders who collude with this ideology are at risk of joining an unholy alliance of autocrats.
Israel provides a second example of a democratic state battling to resist the slide towards autocracy. Benjamin Netanyahu is a war-weary leader who sees no way out other than to embrace his long-standing ally, the United States, now in thrall to a narcissistic autocrat who is managing to overturn democracy in his own country.
Both Israel and Britain have a fine tradition of democracy. There is, however, a difference between the two countries. Israel is waging a bitter war against an enemy fuelled by antisemitism, whose raison d’etre is to destroy the Israeli state. That breeds a survivor mentality among Jews and an Israeli determination to remain strong at all costs. This inevitably leads to a tension between the need to preserve democratic freedoms and the obligation to protect the security of the state.
Britain has no such excuse. Starmer’s decision to appease Trump may win him some concessions from the imperialist president, but it can only weaken Britain’s capacity to withstand the encroachment of autocracy. Starmer has yet to sound convinced that he realises that Trump is taking an axe to democracy.
If he could manage this, he could make Britain a rallying point around which more timorous states could consolidate their opposition to what is now an unopposed juggernaut. The longer Trump goes unchallenged, the more difficult it becomes to reverse the process.
