Trump in Small Britain

When Donald Trump is right, he’s right. The British health care system should open up to the market. That was the demand made by the U.S. president during his meeting with Prime Minister Theresa May, who had recently resigned. When he later backed off in view of the outraged reaction by the British, he nevertheless made clear what would remain of the “special relationship” once the superpower United States negotiated with Small Britain: nothing.

In post-Christian Great Britain, the National Health Service is a kind of national religion. Among all the things Britain fought for in World War II, from the preservation of the empire to a classless society at home, only the NHS has remained as a symbol of the promise of a welfare state that cares for its citizens “from cradle to grave.”

Not even Margaret Thatcher, who deregulated the railways, car companies and social housing, who snatched mines from trade unions and deregulated the stock exchange, not even the great Margaret Thatcher who put an end to British socialism dared to privatize the NHS. Tony Blair plunged billions into the inefficient apparatus, which works only in part because surgeons from other EU countries work the waiting lists at British hospitals in their spare time.

Boris Johnson sent a bus through London during the Brexit campaign, spreading the lie that Britain was transferring 350 million pounds to the EU every week. The money should be used to “finance the NHS,” Johnson said. He may soon have to appear before a court for this lie. However, it has fulfilled its function: Socialism instead of the EU, that was the slogan and it worked.

Now Trump has made it clear to the British that they should think of another Brexiteer slogan: “Take back control!” Those who liberate themselves from the alleged yoke of Brussels will not become masters of their national destiny but will stand alone against the Moloch U.S. and China. If EU standards do not apply to animal husbandry, food and drug safety, labor law and competition, then American or Chinese standards apply.

As I said before, Trump is right about the NHS. But anyone who reviles EU rules should ask themselves what the alternative is, not just in Britain.