Friends Like These: How Trump Is Hurting Conservatives Across The Anglosphere

President Trump has affected support for right-wing parties across the Anglosphere (Alamy)

Nigel Farage is riding a wave of support that has seen Reform UK take previously solid Labour seat Runcorn and Helsby, and make big gains in council and mayoral elections across England. 

This might at first sight seem to disprove the notion that public anger outside the US at Donald Trump has arrested the march of the populist right. But would Farage have done even better had it not been for his association with the US president? And how do we account for the Reform UK leader’s newfound capacity to criticise his friend? 

Certainly, whatever ‘Trump effect’ is playing out in English-speaking countries, it comes as a dissatisfaction with mainstream parties, particularly incumbents, remains powerful. 

Keir Starmer is the most unpopular prime minister within five months of taking office for 40 years, according to an Ipsos poll. 

It meant that Canadian Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre appeared all but certain to win right up until Trump’s inauguration. Leading in the opinion polls by 20 points, the Liberal Party began to face the threat of electoral oblivion. 

But within his first 100 days, Trump mockingly called the then-prime minister Trudeau “Governor Trudeau” and kept saying Canada would be the 51st state of America. 

The Trump effect led to new Liberal leader, Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of England, winning a stunning victory at the election in April, with Pierre Poilievre even losing his seat. 

Australia and New Zealand do not face the same existential threat to their country, but their export markets face a 10 per cent tariff from the United States as part of “Liberation Day”. Once a close dependent ally to fight off the threat of China, Australia saw a 20-point drop in trust in the US to act responsibly. 

Peter Dutton, the leader of the centre-right Liberal Party in Australia, led in the polls as recently as February and was expected to defeat incumbent Anthony Albanese. On 3 May, Labor's Anthony Albanese defied the incumbency curse and won a nationwide election by a landslide — unseating Coalition leader Dutton, who had previously represented his constituency for 24 years. 

Meanwhile, New Zealand’s right-wing government – a three-way coalition between the National Party, ACT and NZF – is stalling in the polls. At the next election, Christopher Luxon could become the first conservative leader not to win a second term. 

Yaron Brook, the chair of free-market Ayn Rand Institute, tells The House that conservatives everywhere are being associated and tarnished by President Trump’s actions: “People are convinced he is a bully, not smart, and incompetent.” 

Each country faces its own unique challenges, some of which are not linked to Trump directly. Canada’s cities face a housing crisis that makes London’s look tame; climate change and China’s eminence play a more central role in Australian politics; and recovering from the acute economic downturn is crucial for voters in New Zealand, after taking a disproportionate hit from their strict lockdown measures over the pandemic. 

But Trump is providing centre-left leaders in the Anglosphere, who were once strong allies of the US, the opportunity to distance themselves from the president and find a “safe and explicit” way of doing nationalism, according to Scarlett Maguire, CEO of polling firm Merlin Strategy: “It’s an opportunity for centre-left parties to reframe themselves as patriotic, which in recent times they haven’t necessarily liked to.” 

It has effectively helped them rally their core base of voters behind the flag and bring supporters of smaller, left-wing voters back home. 

“For a long time, Canada has had a left tilt,” Canadian professor of politics Eric Kaufmann tells The House. “What might be happening is the consolidation of the left-wing vote, which [puts] the Liberals over the top,” he adds. 

David Farrar, a pollster who worked for the New Zealand National Party, which is now in government, says he believes the centre-right there is less adversely affected than conservative parties in Australia and Canada because they are in government and less populist than their counterparts. 

Both Poilievre and Dutton have tried to fend off the ‘orange embrace’.  

“Pete is a very, very proud Australian,” says a friend of Dutton, adding that comparisons to Trump were “lazy”. According to Professor Kauffman, Poilievre was making a concerted effort to distance himself from Trump by not attending his election party in Mar-a-Lago on 8 November. 

Senior Reform figures acknowledge Trump is starting to have an impact. Farage is certainly not extolling his friendship with the US president as much as he did prior to Trump’s inauguration. The Reform UK leader went so far as to say the tariffs were “too much, too soon”. 

While Reform UK was the big winner at the 1 May local and mayoral elections, Farage's party might be starting to nudge up against an upper limit in support, according to psephologists. The reasons may have nothing to do with the US president, however. 

“Reform started to plateau in mid-February,” Professor John Curtice tells The House. “But it’s very difficult to prove it’s linked with anything particularly to do with Trump.” 

“Another way of reading it is that, basically, they are very much milking the pro-Brexit market. That is a maximum of 40 per cent of the vote. They’re never going to get all of it.” 

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