Should we object when foreigners meddle in our internal business? Some liberal thinkers say we should welcome it. National independence, as an idea, has been going through a bad patch recently.
Countries are not free to decide their own affairs.
Solemn treaties forbid them to say who may or may not cross their borders. International Charters of Rights prevent once-proud nations from making their own laws. Supranational bodies, especially the EU, rob their members of key features of independence, especially frontiers and currencies.
This may be welcome to unhappy peoples living in misery and oppression.
Yet, in contented and prosperous states, such as ours still mostly is, there are many who can see the point of independent nationhood. Indeed, we recently voted to get it back.
Britain, one of the oldest-established nations on the planet, has especially strong reasons to think this way. We are bound together with an ancient and almost mystical web of laws, traditions, customs and habits.
We understand our fellow-countrymen a hundred times better than we understand those who do not share our heritage. We laugh at the same jokes, know the same history, feel at home in the same landscape, and share an ultimate togetherness despite regional differences, political loyalties, class divisions or anything else. We are British. Outsiders are as baffled by us as we are by them.
One thing that unites us above all is the threat of interference by those who are not British. These unifying patriotic forces are so complex and tangled that foreign visitors have puzzled over them for centuries – and they have more than once underestimated us as a result, mistaking patience, tolerance and forbearance for weakness. These interlopers all eventually withdrew to lick their wounds.
Elon Musk, no doubt a brilliant businessman, is interested in involving himself in our politics
Mr Musk is wooing Dominic Cummings, whose ride through the upper regions of UK politics has been almost as chaotic as Mr Musk’s journey from major entrepreneur to minor prophet
Mr Musk first entangled himself with Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, but is already showing signs of having no idea what he is doing
Now we find that an American citizen, Elon Musk, no doubt a brilliant businessman, is interested in involving himself in our politics. Yet he obviously knows little or nothing about us.
He first entangled himself with Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, but is already showing signs of having no idea what he is doing. He veered in a matter of days from smiling friendship to stinging criticism.
He spoke of contributing money to Reform. But he then turned on Mr Farage, sneering that he does not ‘have what it takes’, and should be replaced. It might be rather hard to pull back from such a brutal personal denunciation, and we may suspect that relations between Mr Musk and Mr Farage are now a good deal cooler than they used to be – despite Mr Farage’s claims of a rapprochement.
Mr Farage could of course explain it all away by pointing out that Mr Musk, who has foolishly boosted the repellent ‘Tommy Robinson’, is rather erratic, to put it politely. But in that case why would he want to be shackled to such an unpredictable person by chains of money?
How will Mr Farage react to The Mail on Sunday’s revelation today that Mr Musk is also wooing Dominic Cummings, whose wild ride through the upper regions of British politics has been almost as chaotic as Mr Musk’s journey from major entrepreneur to minor prophet?
It would be hard to find two more disruptive people in either Britain or the USA, and – unless you like chaos – it is very worrying to think of them working together to influence our national affairs.
Britain has plenty of problems, not least a Labour government that has lost its way with amazing speed. Kemi Badenoch needs to rebuild the Tory brand as soon as possible. But things are not so bad that we need a tech billionaire – let alone one guided and aided by Dominic Cummings – to rescue us.