One of the fascinating aspects of the French Revolution, as one convulsion after another swept France in the 1790s, was that it transformed the politics of other countries too.
Like the US today, France was, until then, seen as both the most powerful of all nations and the great upholder of the established order. The dramatic overturning of that order created admirers and enemies all over Europe with a profound effect on politics for generations: in Britain it broke the Whig party, led to Edmund Burke’s defining of conservatism and spurred the industrial and military prowess with which an enormous empire would be governed. Its effect on ideas — such as the whole concept of left and right wings in politics — endures today.
The opening weeks of the second Trump administration have not gone as far as the French Revolution, which led to war with neighbouring countries. At least not yet. But in a world in which news spreads in seconds and trade passes freely across many frontiers, the effect of upheaval in a superpower is much more rapid than two centuries ago.
Look at Canada, suddenly finding that its reliable best friend has turned into a predatory bully. In only six weeks, support for separatism in Quebec has plummeted, as people realise that being part of Canada is not so bad and there isn’t much French spoken in the White House.
Or glance at Germany, where within days an incoming conservative chancellor will force through the abandonment of his country’s constitutional limit on debt to spend vastly more on defence and infrastructure. Yes, that’s a conservative saying they need far more debt. In Germany. Where the word for debt also means guilt. It is the biggest change in that country’s policies in decades, and so great is the shock of recent weeks that even if Trump turned into a friendly, reassuring pussycat tomorrow it would all still go ahead.
Across western democracies, a realignment of ideas, and sometimes of parties, is at hand. In many of them, the impact of Trump will be arguably as great as in America itself.
For mainstream parties such as Canada’s Liberals or Germany’s Christian Democrats, or indeed Britain’s Labour and Conservative parties, this could be a lifeline just when they were drifting, and perhaps not far from drowning, as waves of populism roll in. It is their way back to relevance and coherence. It is a clarifying moment in which anyone with their eyes open can see the real world and no longer maintain the delusion that everything is fine. It is suddenly obvious that countries that can’t control their borders, can’t make things work, rely on others for all new technologies, accept that much of their population is sick and don’t have a hope of defending themselves, have to do something about it — and fast.
You do not have to be an enthusiast for Trump — and readers of this column will know that I’m not — to think that his impact on politics elsewhere could be positive. If parties of the centre-left and centre-right learn from him in some respects and respond decisively to the challenge he represents in others, their chances of seeing off Trump lookalikes, from Farage to Le Pen, will be improved. In the process they can make many essential changes in the performance of western governments.
The Trump impact abroad comes in three parts: instructive, galvanising and anchoring. The instructive part is that he is showing a modern state is not helpless when it comes to tackling intractable problems with which its citizens are deeply unhappy. Immigration across the Mexican border has slowed to a trickle since he took office. He has shown that this is not just a matter of policing frontiers but of changing the rules.
In Britain and the rest of Europe, leaders are increasingly acknowledging they will have to do that. Otherwise, they will be overwhelmed, not necessarily by immigrants but by far-right parties who object to them. New EU plans discussed last week propose accelerated deportations and “return hubs” outside Europe. There is growing interest in rewriting the European Convention on Human Rights. Voters who see that Trump can control migration will not accept that their own governments cannot.
A second instructive example is the famous Doge, the Elon Musk-led effort to cut the cost of government. Whatever we think of the methods, which seem unprincipled and chaotic, the drive to reduce bureaucracy and make the administrative state more responsive to democratic wishes is contagious. Here, the Tories have promised a Doge of their own, as has Scottish Labour, while Sir Keir Starmer performed his own demolition of NHS England last week. The idea that a leaner state can be made to work better is going mainstream.
The galvanising element is visible every day. Military and political leaders across Europe meet urgently, plans for more defence spending pour from western capitals, satellite companies based outside the US have been soaring in value, and the EU is planning to spend hundreds of billions of euros on technology and arms. To pay for it all, borrowing constraints are jettisoned in some countries while welfare spending is targeted everywhere.
In Britain, with more than a million under-25s on sickness benefits, Labour is agonising over new benefit rules but knows it has to make huge reforms to make higher growth and better defences feasible.
Instructive and galvanising — these parts of the Trump effect are largely what he intends. It will be a world made more in his own image. But the third part is anchoring. Most western leaders and their electorates are horrified by the spectacle of great power being wielded in a moral vacuum: Canada victimised for no clear reason, Greenland coveted even though it is the territory of an ally, Putin treated as a friend despite causing hundreds of thousands of deaths, Zelensky humiliated on television, longstanding US programmes on HIV/Aids in Africa abruptly terminated, tariffs on hardworking firms raised and lowered on a whim.
The power of this part of the Trump effect will lie in the rejection of this way of conducting leadership in the modern world. These actions are a reminder that an effective democratic state is part of a moral order in which its policies should be anchored; that its reach and respect in the world rely on being able to distinguish right from wrong; that the abuse of great power brings resistance and rejection. For the next four years, Trump will be a living demonstration of the need for such anchoring.
Make the state work, recover the ability of a nation to stand up for itself and act with principle. Mark Carney, Sir Keir Starmer, Friedrich Merz and others have their chance to take the effect of Trump on the world and revive their countries and politics.
