The cracks are showing

The cracks are showing

It wasn’t his own trump card but it may prove to have been ours. As a Leading World Politician you can take on pretty much who you want, when you want with a good chance of winning. Lobbies are powerful but if the boss is not their way inclined the best they can do is delay a change or mitigate a tricky situation. Of Lyndon Johnson, that masterful wheeler dealer negotiator, they said “All the way with LBJ”. Well, mostly.

Powerful as the President of the United States is he should think twice about taking on collective Big Business. Generally these tycoons of industry steer as far clear of politics as they can. Their customers have different causes, backgrounds and desires. Pleading one turns off the others. Anyway, businesses are competitive, disinclined to collude for both commercial and legal reasons. When they do they make a formidable adversary.

So getting Big Business to jointly align against you is a spectacular achievement and one no sensible President would aspire to – unless, of course, he could appeal over industrial heads to a disillusioned voter. But voters are not disillusioned with big business at present. They see the Big Four Newcomers as pioneers of an amazing new world. They are frightened of them, wary of the technologies they are producing and personally slow to adapt. But they also see leaders among them that they do not see among politicians any more.

Setting up a Council is easy; disbanding it, fraught with pitfalls. If it happens to be a Big Business Council, beware. Business runs the world today while politicians discuss how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. For confirmation of this view, look at what has happened to Theresa May’s Hard Brexit. ‘Gone with the Wind’ is putting it mildly. Who blew it away? Big Business. They had a spokesperson, of course. Who was it now? Oh, I remember, P Hammond. You may know him as British Chancellor of the Exchequer. He got told which side Britain’s Bread is Buttered in no uncertain terms.

So for want of a friend in the KKK D Trump has ticked off his business friends, unnerved his Republican friends – however right-wing they said they were – and stuck a pin in the reasonable American voter. I’d call that getting on for Game, Set and Match, wouldn’t you?

Oh, do please let it be, before an idiot has to fire missiles at the world and provoke a deadly response to end human life.

This Captain needs sinking before the ship goes down, not with it.