From Tony Blair: ‘I’m sorry Donald Trump is a world-class liar’
A former British prime minister says there is “something wrong with America and American politics” and blames a rise in far-right parties.
Writing in the Washington Post, Tony Blair describes Mr Trump’s rise as “concerning” and “the culmination of American politics in a truly terrifying direction”.
Mr Blair says that what he calls the “America’s Anti-Democratic Movement” poses a “very real and present danger” to stability, democracy and freedom.
He argues that the rise of figures such as Donald Trump and Nigel Farage over the past decade is a sign of “a genuine erosion of America’s faith in itself as a forward-looking, modern, outward-looking nation”.
Mr Blair calls for a renewal of democratic institutions and processes to restore public trust.
But he writes: “It is now far too late to change the course that American politics has been on for a generation… it is not hard to see that what started with the Republican Revolution of the mid-1990s will take its toll on the country’s political institutions and the values on which they stand.”
Mr Blair concludes: “Trumpism is a political force to be reckoned with… it is based on a contempt for the pluralist, globalist idea that has guided the United States for more than two centuries. It marks a dangerous new shift in America’s view of the world.”