Dear John,
Today marks the 100th day of Donald Trump’s second term as President of the United States. In just over three months, we’ve watched on as a global superpower dismantled its own democracy.
The first 100 days of a government are supposed to set the tone. Trump’s second term has delivered a clear message: the rule of law now only applies to the perceived enemies of the regime.
Britain should be watching very closely. Because the same toxic political project is gaining ground here.
Here’s a (by no means exhaustive) list of what Trump has done so far:
Destroyed the administrative state: Through Elon Musk’s so-called “Department of Government Efficiency,” key regulatory bodies—protecting everything from clean water to financial fairness—have been gutted.
Ideological purges: Civil servants face loyalty tests. Pro-Trump loyalists now occupy crucial roles across federal agencies.
Academic and legal crackdowns: Universities and law firms have been targeted. International students have had visas revoked simply for exercising free speech.
Defied Congress: Trump has bypassed Congressional authority over government spending, shredding the Constitution’s ‘power of the purse’.
Abused deportation powers: Hundreds have been deported without trial to an unregulated mega-prison in El Salvador—dodging US legal protections entirely.
Ignored court rulings: Even orders from the Supreme Court have been flatly ignored—an astonishing assault on the rule of law.
Jailed judges: Yes, really. Trump’s FBI arrested a sitting circuit court judge—for daring to uphold the law.
And that’s just scratching the surface. We haven’t even touched on his tariffs disaster, alignment with Putin, efforts to deport US citizens, pardoning January 6th insurrectionists, or when he threatened to invade Canada. But the resounding message is clear.
This is what authoritarianism looks like. It begins gradually, and then it comes all at once.
Here in the UK, we’re facing a similar storm.
Voters are exhausted by two-party politics. Many have lost faith in the entire system. That frustration, distrust, and political fatigue is rocket fuel for Farage and Reform UK.
Sound familiar?
That’s exactly how Trump came to power. The US failed to take its trust crisis seriously. It handed power to those who weaponised distrust. And now, the cost is staggering: a broken democracy, a silenced civil society, and a nation adrift.
The far-right in both countries are just two sides of the same coin. Andrea Jenkins, Reform UK’s mayoral candidate for Greater Lincolnshire, is reportedly campaigning on instituting a Musk-style ‘DOGE’ project at the local level.
We still have time in Britain. But not much.
Keir Starmer has acknowledged the crisis of trust. He says he wants to fix it. So far, we’ve seen little action. Public frustration is only growing.
Farage and Reform UK are rising fast. The window to act is closing. We can look across the Atlantic today and see precisely where they’d take us – towards a regime that values money and power above all else, where ordinary people have even less of a voice than they did before.
Starmer must treat this like the democratic emergency it is. Before it’s too late.
Fixing trust in politics is a monumental task. It won’t be easy. But we already know where he needs to start: introducing a fairer voting system with a National Commission for Electoral Reform, taking dark money out of politics, and tackling the spread of disinformation and conspiracy theories.
