“When someone tells you who they are, believe them the first time.” I found myself thinking of Maya Angelou as I watched Donald Trump’s rambling, belligerent address at the World Economic Forum this afternoon.
As he railed against green energy and demanded the right to “acquire” Greenland, I thought of all the times - over so many years - when Trump has told us exactly who he is. The sexual assault allegations. The mockery of disabled people. The casual disregard for human life.
But this week felt different.
What Trump revealed in Davos was not just his appetite to remake the world - by force if necessary - but something more alarming: that democracy in America is fast receding into the distance. And that Britain could follow unless it acts fast.
A few hours before Trump spoke, I read an op-ed by his commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, in the Financial Times. It was pure MAGA - a declaration of war on the status quo, propped up by selective economics. One line stood out: “With President Trump, capitalism has a new sheriff in town.”
The reality is the opposite. Far from being Gary Cooper in High Noon, Trump is part racist mafia don, part modern-day kleptocrat.
Take the “Gaza peace board” announced earlier this week - which already feels like ancient history in a hyper-accelerated news cycle. While headlines focused on Tony Blair and Vladimir Putin, the small print revealed that every member would have to pay $1 billion in cash - to Trump.
Trump’s political career is an unprecedented exercise in self-enrichment. In his first term alone he made hundreds of millions from cryptocurrency ventures. This week the New York Times reported that since returning to office he has used the presidency to make at least $1.4 billion.
This is scandalous. But what is too often missed is how it became possible. Trump’s grip on power - and his dismantling of the guardrails of democracy - was bought.
Silicon Valley poured more than $394 million into the election that returned him to the White House. Elon Musk alone gave $243 million. Zuckerberg and Bezos funded his inauguration. Larry Ellison - whom we have investigated at Democracy for Sale through our reporting on the Tony Blair Institute - now enjoys extraordinary influence inside Trump’s White House.
As we revealed before the 2024 election, donors who bankroll right-wing think tanks in Britain channelled more than $45 million into Trump’s campaign.
The returns have been spectacular. Nowhere is this clearer than in crypto. The industry has poured hundreds of millions into US politics, including $18 million into Trump’s inauguration fund - money the president can spend however he chooses.
Any pretence of regulating the crypto wild west has vanished. Trump now claims criticism of cryptocurrency is part of a plot by “left-wing fascists” to weaponise the state. He has never, as far as I can tell, said a word about money laundering, terrorist finance or the industrial-scale frauds fuelled by crypto.
It isn’t even discreet. Lutnick himself, the self-styled “sheriff”, is a Trump donor who previously ran Cantor Fitzgerald, which owns a major stake in Tether - a so-called stablecoin implicated in corruption and criminal finance across the world.
The rot did not begin with Trump. Money has warped American politics for decades. Citizens United crippled the last serious attempt to restrain it. Democrats took the money too.
But something new is happening now. Political power is being concentrated in the hands of a tiny class of ultra-rich individuals who no longer just buy influence - they have become the state. We see it in Czechia, in Georgia, in the Philippines. Oligarchs are no longer lurking in the shadows. They are running countries.
And yet in Britain there is a dangerous complacency. Like the US, our politics runs on private money. We already have overwhelming evidence of donors buying access and influence.
But in all the commentary about Trump in Davos - and about the collapse of American democracy - there has been remarkably little discussion of how this could happen here. Crypto billionaires pouring record sums into Reform are treated as a political oddity, not as what they are: a warning.
Keir Starmer has a rare chance to break the link between money and power, and to rebuild the foundations of British democracy. So far he has chosen not to take it.
If he doesn’t, we may find ourselves in a few years’ time watching our own version of Trump strutting across the world stage - and asking, too late, how we ever let it happen.
We’re also an island. What’s the betting he turns his eyes on us next? Militarily the US owns us, Starmer must wake up to the real world as it is now.
I have complained about most of Starmer's decisions.
But in recent weeks:
- he's repeatedly stuck up for Greenland and Denmark;
- he spoke forcefully about Grok and took some swift action;
- he seems to be dropping the Digital ID initiative.
His actions suggest a major change of approach. They could well be the decisions of someone who's been jolted awake and is reconsidering our alliances.
Looking at other replies in this thread, I think we should keep pressing MPs, keep supporting journalists and keep organising with groups like 38 Degrees, to make our voices heard.
Carole Cadwalladr asked people to send her recent article about the US threat to UK security, to their MPs. I did. I assume others did.
Lib Dems have been seen clutching Byline Times in the Houses of Parliament.
A lot of us were worn out by 2025.
But some of the pushback does get heard by those in power.
After so many disappointing decisions last year by the government, this could be a chance to articulate the new Britain we want.