“London -- Friends don't let friends drive their economies into a wall and their people into a ditch. That was President Trump's message to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer at Turnberry, Mr. Trump's Scottish golf resort, last month.
The power dynamic was clear as Mr. Starmer and his wife, Victoria, climbed the resort's steps. Donald Trump, son of Mary Anne MacLeod of the Western Isles off Scotland's coast, received the Starmers like a clan chieftain hosting King George III's tax collectors. Messrs. Trump and Starmer may salute the uniform and call each other friends, but they are, politically speaking, enemies. Their press conference was humiliating for the floundering Labour leader.
Mr. Trump called London's Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan a "nasty person" who has "done a terrible job."
"He's a friend of mine, actually," Mr. Starmer sputtered.
His defensive squeak spoke volumes about Britain's political class, and much about the American political class that Mr. Trump has fought since 2016. Mr. Starmer assumes that his friendship with Mr. Khan places them both beyond reproach. They are elected officials, but they claim the privileges once enjoyed by bishops or aristocrats. Their presumption is the old class power by another name. It is corrosive to law and democracy. The British call it "chumocracy."
In his 2022 book, "Chums," the journalist Simon Kuper analyzed how a cohort of rivalrous frenemies from 1980s Oxford rose through the coteries of private school, student debates and political journalism into the Conservative Party, where they achieved Britain's exit from the European Union. They include Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Daniel Hannan and Jacob Rees-Mogg. Messrs. Starmer and Khan are from the rival and more entrenched liberal chumocracy of human-rights lawyers, technocrats and job-for-life white-collar bureaucrats.
We are now exiting the Great Realignment, the post-2008 reversal of political loyalties. Across America, the Republicans have replaced the Democrats as the workers' party, and the Democrats dominate the wealthiest ZIP Codes. Britain's Conservatives collapsed because they are too snobbish to be chums with the workers. Labour is collapsing because its inverse snobbery makes it an enemy of free markets. The poles of political strategy have reversed, too.
Two antiliberal theorists explain how politics now works. The Italian communist Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) realized that in a middle-class democracy, the party must control the institutions. The Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt (1888-1985) simplified politics into the "friend-enemy" distinction, and the "combat" that follows.
The right are now Gramscians, conquering the administrative state to mobilize it. The DOGE episode, in which Elon Musk laid waste to the U.S. Agency for International Development, was a test run for rebooting the federal bureaucracy with the right foot. The left are now Schmittians, combating their enemies and favoring their friends. Hunter Biden is pardoned, Joe Biden gets a pass, and Mr. Trump is harassed with the kind of political prosecutions that jailed Gramsci -- a tactic Schmitt justified because it steadied the ship of state.
We translate politeia, Aristotle's term for a state and its distribution of power, as "regime." Usually, government rotates between parties that agree on the nature of the regime; hence terms such as "uniparty," "the Blob" and "the Swamp." When regimes weaken, populists promise regime change: Barack Obama in 2008, Donald Trump in 2016. Occasionally, they deliver, as Mr. Trump is now doing. Mr. Starmer is rarer still, at least in democracies. Like the Biden administration, his government seeks to protect a failing regime.
When Labour suppresses free speech and bad news, panders to Islamists and environmentalists, and runs a "two-tier" justice system, it exploits the legislative legacy of the Conservatives' 14-year effort to keep the British regime afloat. The Conservatives initiated speech controls such as Public Spaces Protection Orders, under which Christians have been arrested for silent prayer outside abortion clinics, and Non-Crime Hate Incidents, in which Britons who speak out receive home visits from police. Both parties minimized the systematic rape and trafficking of white British girls by gangs of mostly Pakistani Muslim origin, and both explored defining "Islamophobia" in law.
The Conservatives also passed the Online Safety Act. It aims to protect children from pornography and pro-suicide websites. But it also includes a new "false communication" offense. Social-media users can be prosecuted for sending messages intended to "cause non-trivial psychological or physical harm to a likely audience."
When this phase of the act went into effect in late July, X users in Britain were blocked from viewing parliamentary speeches about grooming gangs or sharing footage of police arresting anti-immigration protestors. The government is also creating a police unit to monitor groups organizing protests against two issues on which the regime is vulnerable: mass immigration and the asylum crisis.
At the White House in February, Mr. Starmer insisted that free speech is fine in Britain and that his government wouldn't "get across American citizens." It already was across them. Documents posted on X on July 28 by Rep. Jim Jordan (R., Ohio) show that Ofcom, Britain's broadcast regulator, notified the American-owned Reddit platform in 2023 that it was "appropriate that Reddit will be supervised" under a "formal regulatory relationship." On May 21, Ofcom informed Rumble, an American podcast producer, that it is "monitoring" Rumble's "compliance."
In August 2024, following anti-immigrant riots across England, the chief of the Metropolitan Police threatened to use "the full force of the law" to "come after" non-British internet users. On July 25, Peter Kyle, Labour's secretary of state for science, was asked if he would shut down the X platform for contravening the Online Safety Act. Mr. Kyle replied: "We will go after you if you do not take account of the law. . . . Access to the British society and economy is a privilege and not a right."
Britain's regime forfeited its people's trust by bungling the economy, bringing in millions of immigrants, and failing to defend the borders. It now suppresses legitimate responses by trying to interdict private communications and isolate the British from their free-speaking American cousins. But any teenager with a virtual private network can get around the Great Firewall of London.
As in Nicolae Ceausescu's Romania in 1989, Britain's people have turned against the regime. The regime is turning against the people. It can't silence them all. Mr. Starmer and his friends will go down with the ship. It's still unclear what kind of regime can refloat Britain and restore its traditional freedoms. Still, regime change is coming.
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Mr. Green is a Journal contributor and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.” [1]
There's ongoing discussion about the state of democracy both in the EU and the UK, and criticisms exist for both.
Concerning the EU's "democratic deficit"
The term "democratic deficit" has been used to describe a perceived lack of democratic accountability and citizen representation in EU institutions.
Some argue that the transfer of power to unelected bodies like the European Commission has diminished national democratic control.
The EU is criticized for not fostering a strong, unified European identity, potentially hindering democratic legitimacy and participation.
While the European Parliament is directly elected, it has been considered weaker than other key institutions and voter turnout in its elections has been relatively low.
Addressing democracy in the UK
Recent years have seen concerns raised about the health of UK democracy, including potential shifts in the balance of power between Parliament and the Executive.
Changes to rights, freedoms and constitutional norms are points of concern for some.
For example, some argue that the Elections Act 2022, which introduced voter ID requirements and impacts electoral body independence, undermines democratic processes, according to Unlock Democracy.
Concerns have also been raised about media ownership concentration, pressures on local journalism, and government influence over the BBC.
Comparing the two
Both the EU and the UK face scrutiny regarding the health of their democratic systems.
However, the nature of the criticisms differs. EU concerns center on institutional arrangements and the impact of supranational governance on national democracy.
UK concerns often focus on the power dynamics within the existing parliamentary system and specific legislative or policy changes.
It's important to remember that:
The EU is promoting propaganda that it actively supports democracy and human rights as core values, both within the Union and globally. In reality EU is wasting our money to keep as long as possible the flames of conflict in Ukraine, pretends that some Internet postings in Rumania are so dangerous to democracy, that elections of Rumanian president should be canceled and falsified, attempts to kill main opposition parties in France (Le Pen) and Germany (AfD).
The UK underlines that it has a long history of democratic institutions and a vibrant civil society, so this negates the outrageous undemocratic behavior of elite today.
Assessing and comparing the health of democracies is a complex process, involving numerous factors and perspectives.
1. Britain Is on the Verge of Regime Change. Green, Dominic. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 06 Aug 2025: A15.
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