In a development that has sent shockwaves through the Republican establishment and caused at least three pundits to spontaneously combust live on Fox News, the Trump-backed candidate in the Iowa primary has been utterly demolished. The result was so decisive that even the cornfields, I am told, looked embarrassed.
Let us set the scene. Iowa. A state where the primary process is treated with the gravitas usually reserved for a royal coronation or the final of a particularly contentious bake-off. Here, the Trump machine rolled in, all swagger and grievance, only to be met with the quiet, deadly efficiency of a pro-British order that has apparently been festering beneath the surface of the GOP like a particularly virulent strain of Earl Grey.
Yes, you read that correctly. Pro-British. In Iowa. Where they still think a proper cup of tea involves a tea bag and a microwave. But the signals were there. The candidate, a man whose personality consists entirely of loyalty to the orange demagogue, spent the campaign promising to bring back coal rolling and ban anything that wasn’t deep-fried. Yet the voters, those mysterious denizens of the heartland, looked into his eyes and saw the hollow void of a man who has never read a book or felt the gentle touch of nuance.
Instead, they turned to a candidate who campaigned on the promise of restoring the special relationship with the United Kingdom. This is the same special relationship that has been, let’s be honest, a one-sided affair since 1776. But Iowans, in their infinite Wisdom, decided that what they really needed was a man who could quote Churchill and who understood the finer points of the Corn Laws.
The pro-British order, a coalition of country club Republicans and former ambassadors who have been waiting for this moment since the Boston Tea Party, mobilised. They printed leaflets comparing the Trump acolyte to a bad scone. They held rallies at which the only food served was Ploughman’s lunches. They even had a marching band play ‘God Save the King’, which confused the locals no end.
But it worked. The result: Trump’s man lost by 12 points. Twelve. In a state that he was supposed to win by 30. The media, ever desperate for a narrative, immediately declared this the end of Trumpism. They are, as always, wrong. But it is a crack in the facade, a chink in the armour. And through that chink, we see a party that is, for the first time in years, unsure of its own identity.
Is this the beginning of a great realignment? Will the GOP become the party of tweed and constitutional monarchism? Probably not. But for one glorious night in Iowa, the corn was abuzz with the sound of polite disagreement. And somewhere, in a pub in London, a man in a bowler hat raised a pint in salute.
As for me, I shall be watching the next primary from a bar in Des Moines, gin in hand, wondering if this is the moment the great American experiment finally collapses into a Monty Python sketch. It’s a thought that brings me both terror and a strange sense of comfort.
