A hostile media will criticise it no matter what. So it should ignore the noise, harness its huge majority – and act decisively
Those rapid-fire presidential executive orders did so much within so few hours that if you’d looked away briefly you’d have missed another burst of Donald Trump’s assaults on America’s founding freedoms. The democratic west looks on aghast at this hurricane of hostile values. And yet politicians everywhere must feel a sneaking envy. He just goes for it, does whatever he wants, as quick as a flash. Forget consultations, ignore civil servants’ warnings, follow your deepest beliefs, to hell with opinion. Mad, bad, dangerous, but well, wow. What if … ?
A sense of renewed urgency and frustration pulses through the Labour cabinet, urging them to stamp down on the accelerator. You hear it when Keir Starmer speaks. You will hear it in Rachel Reeves’s dash-for-growth speech on Wednesday. Asked about Trump’s boosterism, she said, “Yes, I think we do need more positivity” and that “we’ve got our best days ahead of us”. I heard it in Wes Streeting’s speech to the Fabian Society at the weekend, in Angela Rayner’s defiance of nimbys to build, build, build, and in Ed Miliband’s massive solar and wind power reforms.
Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
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