Tag Archives: #politicalstrategy

Dementing, Despotic, Derranged. What To Do When The President’s Brain Is Missing.

We need to have a serious chat about the tidal wave of noise coming from the other side of the pond because it feels overwhelming. It feels like we are watching a grand, terrifying master plan unfold. Steve Bannon’s flood the zone with shit doctrine is running on steroids. However, I want us to pause, take a deep breath, and look closer at what is actually happening. We are not trapped in a room with a chess grandmaster. We are locked in a supermarket aisle with a toddler who has found a loaded gun and is demanding a chocolate bar.

This is the sceaming Toddler approach to governance. It screams “I want it now” with zero regard for the consequences or the cost. The regime threatens allies, bullies neutrals, and wages war on its own population all at once. It is a display of insatiable greed and grievance. Yet this chaotic flailing reveals a massive fragility. They have committed the classic blunder of Kaiser Wilhelm II by encircling themselves with incompetence. They have started a fight on every front while sitting on a crumbling economy and running on borrowed time.

We can find comfort in understanding the human reality here. The man at the centre is not an ideologue. He is a hollow vessel. Think of Louis XV, whose policy was merely an echo of the last person who flattered him. Trump holds conversations, not positions. He absorbs the energy of the most aggressive voice in the room because agreeing is easier than thinking. He is a paper tiger, terrified of genuine face-to-face conflict, governing by digital shouting because the friction of real human contact is too frightening for him. He loves the role of King but finds the actual job of President terribly boring.

Then we have the biology of it all. We must look at this with a clinician’s eye and a bit of kindness for the human condition, even as we acknowledge the danger. We are watching the collision of malignant narcissism with frontotemporal disinhibition. The frontal lobes are the brain’s braking system. They handle empathy and judgment. When those brakes fail, the engine still revs, but the car has no way to stop. The shift we see now is from theater to reality. The survival instinct that once kept the worst impulses in check is eroding. He is lashing out because he is losing control of his own narrative and perhaps even his own biology. It is the rage of a “Sundowning Caesar.”

So, how do we handle a regime that runs on impulse and borrowed credit? We do not fight the noise. We starve the beast.

We apply a strategy of “Supply Shock.” This regime relies on resources it does not own. It needs data, credit, legitimacy, and professional services to function. We simply make those things too expensive to maintain.

First, we look at the data. The regime runs on digital services. Our friends in the EU and the UK can turn off the tap. We say that if US tech giants want to act as the surveillance arm of a hostile state, their patent protections are void here. We force the shareholders to choose between the regime and the global market.

Next, we look at the money. The tantrums are funded by a national credit card. We need to shatter the illusion that this debt is safe. If pension funds and global investors view these bonds as toxic assets issued by an unstable government, borrowing costs will skyrocket. A tyrant with no money is effectively silenced.

Then we have the internal machinery. We call for a creative kind of friction. We encourage the civil servants and the workers to stay in the room and become the sand in the gears. We use malicious compliance. We demand written clarification for every order that is unclear. We slow-walk the paperwork. We weaponise the boredom. If a dangerous plan takes three weeks of tedious meetings to execute, this President will lose interest and move on to the next shiny object.

Finally, we address the enablers. We strip away the comfort of neutrality. The lawyers and consultants helping this operate need to feel the social cost. We make it clear that facilitating this regime is professional suicide. We decline their dinner invitations. We close our wallets to their firms.

The Trump regime is a Golden Goose demanding endless attention and resources. It has no strategy for when the larder is empty. They are counting on us to play by the old rules. Instead, we are going to cut the power, spike the costs, and block the data. They want everything, and they want it immediately.

We are going to ensure they get nothing but the bill, and you won’t believe the total…

How To Beat Reform

Core Strategic Principle: Diagnosis Before Prescription

Think of the 1970s and you think of flared trousers and Abba. You probably don’t think of Nazi salutes on British streets.

But for a time, the far-right National Front (NF) was a terrifying force in UK politics. Its skinhead gangs terrorised immigrant communities. Its leaders were open Hitler admirers. And in the 1977 elections, over 200,000 people voted for them.

Then, they were crushed. Not in a war, but by a brilliant, gritty campaign that united punk rockers, grandparents, trade unions and communities. Today, as a new wave of populism gains traction, the lessons from that victory are not just history – they’re a handbook.

Here’s how it was done, and how it applies now.

Lesson 1: Stop Debating, Start Disrupting

The anti-fascists of the ’70s knew a crucial truth: you can’t reason someone out of a position they weren’t reasoned into. So they didn’t try. Instead, their strategy was simple: make it impossible for the NF to function.

They physically blocked their marches. They packed their meetings and shouted them down. The goal wasn’t to win an argument; it was to create such a logistical nightmare that the authorities were forced to ban events and the Nazis were too ashamed to show their faces.

The Modern Application: Today, the town hall meeting has been replaced by the social media algorithm. The tactic of disruption isn’t just about physical blocking—which can backfire against a legal party—but about a more sophisticated, multi-pronged assault. This means flooding the digital space with compelling counter-content, using ‘pre-bunking’ techniques to inoculate the public against predictable manipulation, and actively ‘de-branding’ their language by refusing to parrot loaded terms. Instead of “stop the boats,” the debate becomes about “fixing the asylum system.” The goal remains the same: to deny their narrative the clean air it needs to breathe.

Lesson 2: Expose the Core, Not Just the Policies

The NF tried to hide its Nazi core behind a veneer of ‘respectable’ racism. Anti-fascists ripped this mask off. They circulated photos of leader John Tyndall in his not-at-all-a-Nazi-uniform and highlighted his speeches praising Hitler. The result? The more moderate followers fled, and the party splintered. The label ‘Nazi’ stuck because the evidence was overwhelming.

The Modern Application: This isn’t about slapping the ‘fascist’ label on every opponent. It’s about rigorous exposure. Who endorses this party? What do their policies logically lead to? When a candidate is found to have made extremist statements, the question to the leadership is simple: “Do you condone this? If not, what are you doing about it?” Force them to either repudiate their fringe or be defined by it. The battle is to expose the underlying narrative of national humiliation and purging, no matter how sanitised the language.

Lesson 3: Apply Institutional and Economic Friction

Beyond the battle of ideas lies the less visible but equally critical war of institutional accountability. The 1970s activists understood that pressure had to be applied at every level. When the Hackney Gazette ran an NF advert, its staff went on strike.

The Modern Application: The contemporary equivalent is wielding strategic economic and legal pressure. This means holding corporate donors publicly accountable, supporting rigorous challenges to potential campaign spending breaches, and demanding that media platforms couple any coverage with immediate, contextual fact-checking. The objective is to create friction—to make supporting or enabling populism a professionally and reputationally costly endeavour. This isn’t about silencing opposition, but about enforcing the rules and standards that populists seek to erode, ensuring demagoguery carries a tangible price.

Lesson 4: Out-Create Them. Make Hope Go Viral.

This was the masterstroke. While some groups fought in the streets, the Anti-Nazi League and Rock Against Racism (RAR) fought for the culture. They realised that to win over a generation, you couldn’t just be against something; you had to be for something better.

RAR staged legendary gigs that paired white punk bands like The Clash with Black reggae acts. Their 1978 carnival in London attracted 100,000 people—a joyful, defiant celebration that made the NF look like the miserable, hate-fuelled sect they were.

“This ain’t no fucking Woodstock. This is the Carnival against the Nazis!” – Red Saunders, RAR co-founder

The Modern Application: This is the most critical lesson. Populism feeds on pessimism and cultural despair. The antidote is to build a more compelling, positive, and inclusive vision. Where is the modern equivalent of RAR? It’s about supporting creators, artists, and community initiatives that showcase a confident, modern Britain. It’s about telling stories of successful integration and shared future, making ‘hope’ more viral than ‘fear’.

Lesson 5: Protect Your Own. Community is Armour.

When the state failed to protect them, targeted communities organised their own defence. The Southall Youth Movement and others made their neighbourhoods ‘no-go zones’ for racists, patrolling streets and confronting threats directly. This wasn’t just about physical safety; it was about building unbreakable social and political resilience.

“What did we  share with the white left? We learned from them   as well. We shared the vision of a new world,  our world, a world in which we were all equal,   a fairer world.” – Tariq Mahmood, activist

The Modern Application: The threats today are often more digital and psychological than physical, but the principle is the same. This means strengthening local community bonds, supporting organisations that monitor and combat hate crime, and building robust support networks. Critically, this work must be underpinned by a ‘marathon, not a sprint’ mentality. The defeat of the National Front was not the work of a single election cycle but a sustained, multi-year effort. The modern challenge is to build resilient, long-term infrastructure—’the bakery’—that can withstand populist waves by addressing the underlying grievances of isolation and economic despair they exploit.

The Uncomfortable Truth for Today

The crucial difference is that Reform UK is not the National Front. It is a populist party, not a fascist paramilitary one. Applying the 1970s playbook isn’t about mindlessly copying tactics; it’s about intelligently adapting the principles.

The battle against the NF was won by a coalition that understood this was a war fought on multiple fronts simultaneously. It required the raw energy of street-level disruption, the sharp wit of cultural creation, the shrewdness of political exposure, and the patient, grinding work of institutional and legal challenge.

To effectively challenge modern populism demands the same holistic courage. It is not enough to out-create them online if their economic enablers face no consequences. It is not enough to win a legal battle if the cultural narrative of grievance remains unchallenged. The lesson of the 1970s is that victory comes not from a single masterstroke, but from the relentless, coordinated application of pressure everywhere it counts. The question is whether we can build a movement with the strategic depth to fight on all those fronts at once.