Illustration by Kipper Williams

AS my new play Make England Great Again (MEGA) opens, Max Moore, charismatic leader of the Britons First Party, has been elected prime minister. Is he a would-be dictator? And if he is, are we strong and self-aware enough to prevent him from becoming a real dictator?

What authoritarian rulers do – from Franco, Mussolini and Hitler to Trump, Orban and Putin – is enshrine their power by attacking judges and undermining the law, because judges and the law limit what the ruler can do. They also attack the independent civil service, free media, and independent universities whose teaching and research may not be to the government’s liking.

Are the judges not giving the judgments we wish to have? Change the judges. Is the civil service not giving the advice we wish to hear? Change the civil service. Does the state need to award contracts? We have friends who can benefit from them.

Britain is already being softened up for that treatment – hence the chilling Daily Mail headline in November 2016, “Enemies of the people”, when judges obstructed the will of the then prime minister, Boris Johnson.

The far right is more dangerous than the left can ever be because it is nimbler. On every major issue, the left tears itself to pieces, and the far right takes whatever position will be to its advantage. It’s the benefit of travelling ideologically light.

Take the Middle East.  The left and the centre left tear each other to pieces, with one side shouting “anti-Semite” and the other side shouting “genocide.” The far right sees an opportunity and, despite the anti-Semitic history of right-wing authoritarians all over the world, manages to present itself as the protector of the Jews.

Take the culture wars. While the left has disappeared down the trans rabbit hole, at the bottom of which they scream “transphobe” and “misogynist” at each other, Donald Trump spent huge sums of money distributing the slogan: “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.” The ad ran thousands of times across swing states, particularly during high-profile sporting events, and most analysts believe it was one of the most effective in the election.

In some states people became convinced that the Democrats would destroy women’s football, enabling Trump to pose as the most unlikely defender of women’s rights in history.

The newly elected would-be authoritarian leader starts by finding an excuse to use repression, manufacturing a crisis, and frightening people into believing they need the protection of an all-powerful leader.

Putin, as prime minister, cemented his power after a series of bombings which he blamed on Islamist terrorists from Chechnya. He ordered military action, which boosted his popularity and helped pave the way for his rapid rise to the presidency in 2000. No one could ever show that Islamists were behind the bombings, and there’s some evidence that the state security services were to blame.

Trump sent the National Guard on a rampages through Los Angeles despite assurances from California’s governor that the demonstrations against Trump’s immigration policies were under control. Other cities are now getting the same treatment.

In February 1933, as Hitler became German Chancellor (let’s not shrink from the comparison), someone set fire to the Reichstag – the German parliament. Immediately Hitler pushed through the Reichstag Fire Decree which allowed suspension of civil liberties and arrest of political opponents. It served much the same purpose as the disorder in California and the bombings in Moscow.

The parallels with the 1930s are as plain as a fiery cross in the hands of a Ku Klux Klansman. Democratic countries are falling to pale imitations of Trump: Orban in Hungary, Kaczyński in Poland, Erdogan in Turkey, and perhaps Farage or Johnson in Britain.

“Make America great again” says Trump. “I’ll make Britain great again,” said Boris Johnson during the 2019 election campaign. “Make Spain great again,” says Spain’s newly popular far-right party Vox. “We’ll make Hungary great again,” said Viktor Orban in 2016, the year after Kaczyński promised to make Poland great again.

Henry Wallace, US vice president during the Second World War, saw this coming. He said in 1944: “When and if fascism comes to America, it will not be labelled ‘made in Germany’; it will not
be marked with a swastika. It will not even be called fascism; it will be called, of course, ‘Americanism’.”

Could it happen here, and now? You bet it could. Our unwritten constitution makes us more vulnerable than the US. Our first-past-the-post electoral system muddies the waters. Our national tolerance and sang froid has proved to be a myth.

My play is about just how Britain could go the way of Trump’s USA and Orban’s Hungary – or even the dictatorships of the 1930s – and what would happen if we did.

• Make England Great Again opens on September 30 at Upstairs at the Gatehouse in Highgate village. Details and tickets at: www.upstairsatthegatehouse.com/