‘There’s been a vibe shift’: welcome to the new political disorder

Donald Trump isn’t back in the White House yet, but already his victory is being felt across the world. Greenland is pondering the prospect of an invasion after the President-elect refused to rule it out during a Mar-a-Lago press conference. In Canada, the last western leader from the days before Trump has just exited the stage. Justin Trudeau, the one-time liberal hero, quit earlier this week in the face of tanking ratings.

Nick Clegg, the former Liberal Democrat leader, is out at Meta and the billionaires of Silicon Valley are bracing themselves for what comes next. Mark Zuckerberg has announced sweeping changes (including an end to fact-checkers) in response to what he called ‘a cultural tipping point’. The last time Trump won an election, Facebook’s response was to increase censorship in a bid to stop a repeat. Now it wants to join the party.

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The wave of change has also started to take hold in the UK, where Westminster politicians have spent the past week trading barbs about the ‘grooming gangs’ scandal as a direct result of Elon Musk’s tweets. ‘No. 10 thought they’d begin the new term talking about the NHS,’ says an opposition aide. ‘Now they look clueless and on the wrong side of public opinion.’

As Trump returns, politicians and voters alike feel emboldened to say the unsayable. ‘There’s been a vibe shift,’ notes a senior Whitehall figure. In SW1, young thinktankers have a new incentive to share their hard truths: they might be so lucky to get a reply or ‘like’ from Musk. This week, Andrew Griffith, the shadow business secretary and close ally of Kemi Badenoch, declared on X (where else?) that Musk’s purchase of the platform in 2022 may have ‘saved humanity’.