The Right’s Moral Reckoning

Reflections After Democracy’s Darkest Week

This week, America resigned its leadership of the free world. A bold claim — but one backed by a charge sheet that demands attention.

On Wednesday, Donald Trump invited Vladimir Putin in from the cold, announcing that negotiations between America and Russia to end the war in Ukraine would begin "immediately" without consulting Ukraine, Europe, or any of America's NATO allies.

Then, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth took every card the West had to play off the table, dismissing the prospect of Ukrainian NATO membership and the return of territory stolen by Russia in Crimea in 2014 and in the rest of Ukraine since 2022.

Quickly, details of Trump's "peace plan" became clearer; US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent arrived in Kyiv with a document demanding Ukraine sign over 50% of its rare earth minerals to the US in exchange for past military aid, not future support.

On Friday, we had the pleasure of JD Vance making a speech at the Munich Security Conference. Here stood the Vice President of the United States, deputy to a twice-impeached, criminally indicted President, presuming to lecture the world about democratic values:

"...the threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia, it's not China, it's not any other external actor. What I worry about is the threat from within. The retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values: values shared with the United States of America."

It is clear that the next four years cannot simply be managed. During Trump's first term the West attempted to schmooze him, playing for time in the hope that the American people would come to their senses and kick him out at the next election. London, Paris, and Berlin clung to the chance that Trump was an aberration rather than the new norm.

But America's new normal has been coming for some time. It was on show when Barack Obama stood back and let Russia take Crimea, when his red lines in Syria faded to pink once crossed. It was epitomised by Joe Biden's calamitous withdrawal from Afghanistan and his failure to grant Ukraine the support they needed to win the war.

Trump is worse by every measure, and unique in his contempt for democratic norms, but he is the evil that followed apathy — not an overnight disengagement from the world. We should have realised long before now that the US was becoming a permanently unreliable ally.

America now believes it has the right to trade away the sovereignty of democratic nations as a matter of policy. It believes in distorting global trade and taxing its own citizens through tariffs as a matter of policy. It believes that anyone — business or citizen — who stands against its government deserves retribution as a matter of policy.

The special relationship that bound America to Britain and Europe was built on a shared belief in democracy and capitalism. The United States no longer believes in either — not in any serious, institutional sense. And thus, the special relationship died this week.

Much of the ink spilled has focused on the immediate strategic implications of this departure from the cause of global liberty. But for those of us on the right who believe in freedom of markets, and trade, and speech, in the sanctity of the ballot and the defence of the West, there are other considerations to be made too.

If we fail to act, the democratic right will be crushed between two forces. On one side, the populists — resentful, authoritarian, hostile to markets and indifferent to liberty. On the other, an interventionist left pursuing rampant statism. There will be no space for those who believe in free markets, free speech, and effective government — only submission to one form of coercion or the other.

The democratic right will either lead the defence of the free world, or it will be devoured.

We must therefore be the loudest voices in supporting European rearmament. Those who supported Brexit must put aside concerns about collaboration with Europe — so long as it is done on equal terms. The defence of liberty matters more than any grudge about Brussels. We must build a European bulwark capable of standing with America when it is good, and standing without it when it is not.

Above all, we must recognise that Trumpism is not a deviation from the principles of liberty — it is their antithesis. Those on the right who believe in freedom must stop squinting at MAGA and hoping to find something to admire. There is nothing there. No conservatism, no liberalism, no capitalism — only a thuggish, transactional authoritarianism, draped in the stars and stripes.

I view this as our moral reckoning — the right's equivalent to the confrontation the Western left faced with Soviet communism in the 1920s and 1930s. There were those who gazed at Moscow and saw false hope — a "workers' state," a flawed but noble experiment. They excused the show trials, the purges, the gulags. They whispered "yes, but..." as the NKVD dragged the innocent into the dark.

And then there were those who stood against it — Orwell, Koestler, the democratic socialists and anti-totalitarian left. They saw what Soviet communism truly was: a monstrous example of autocracy. They denounced it not because they hated the left, but because they recognised the imposters in their midst.

That is our choice today.

We can choose to avert our gaze — to mumble that tariffs and cosying up to Moscow are some form of "madman strategy" or that Trump's assault on institutions is "just a bit of creative disruption." We can pretend this is merely a rough-and-tumble form of free-market nationalism. That maybe something good will come out of the Trump Administration's pretend commitment to free speech.

Or we can tell the truth: that Trumpism is a betrayal of every value we hold dear. That it is not merely vulgar or incompetent, but an authoritarian movement animated by resentment and control. That if it is allowed to triumph beyond America then it will drag Europe's right into the gutter alongside it.

The battle lines are clear. We stand for democracy, markets, and the rule of law. They stand for cronyism, tariffs, and the strongman's sneer.

And this week — the week America resigned its leadership of the free world — must be our awakening. Europe's democratic right must not pander to the Farages, the Weidels, and the Le Pens, lest our nations, too, slide into the abyss.

We must fix immigration, and we must defend free speech — not to placate the populists, but because ordered borders and open debate are the pillars of a free society. Because we believe in liberty, not as a slogan, but as a lived reality. Because we know that democracy is strongest when it is both secure and unafraid.

But this will not happen if the democratic right continues to offer nothing but a pale imitation of the populists. We must wake up and take our side back — from the demagogues and authoritarians.

For without a confident, pro-democracy right — committed to markets, freedom, and the rule of law — the West cannot be saved.

We must wake up. Because if we do not, we will wake one day to find the free world gone.

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