A Look Across the Pond by Denis Podany

The way to run a country?

On the surface, American politics looks like a circus. Always has. Big personalities. Big mouths. Big drama.

But if you’ve watched closely – really watched – especially from the outside, you start to see something else underneath the noise.

That’s where American Beauty got it right. At first glance, it’s all neat lawns and smiling faces. Then someone whispers: look closer. So, I did.

I watched four years of Democrat rule. I watched the election. I watched what happened afterwards. And the more I watched, the more it felt uncomfortably familiar.

Because what they did over there is exactly what Labour wants to do over here.

What the Democrats did

Let’s start with the basics. The boring stuff politicians hope you won’t notice.

Under the Democrats:

• Money was printed like leaflets.
• Government spending exploded.
• Inflation went through the roof.
• Ordinary people were told it was “temporary.”

Temporary like a hangover that never ends. Food bills jumped. Rent went mad. Fuel became a luxury item. And when people complained, they weren’t answered – they were corrected.

Apparently, prices weren’t rising. It was “price perception”. If you were struggling, you just didn’t understand economics.

That’s not leadership. That’s gaslighting with a degree.

Donald Trump

Now here’s where it gets interesting.

Trump wins – again – and suddenly the same people who told us he’d destroy everything are watching money flood back in.

Not because he’s nice. Not because he’s careful with words. But because he understands something painfully simple: A country is an economy before a political unit.

Trump talks like a builder because he thinks like a builder. You want jobs? Build. You want investment? Stop scaring it. You want growth? Get out of the way. That’s it. That’s the plan.

No white papers. No slogans. No “stakeholder engagement sessions.” Just blunt, transactional reality.

Trump runs a country like a business because he knows the one rule every business lives by: If it loses money long enough, it dies.

Here’s a Trumpism that drives critics mad but works every time: “If it doesn’t work, we’ll change it.” Imagine that. Admitting something might not work before pretending it’s perfect.

Contrasts

Contrast that with Labour’s approach: Roll out a policy. Insist it’s moral. Deny the damage. Blame the public. Double down.

Governments often forget that anything, that loses money long enough, dies. That’s because they can borrow, print, and tax their way out – for a while.

Businesses can’t do the same. That’s why Trump listens to numbers, not narratives.

People sneer and say, “But he’s crude.” Good. Crude gets things done.

When Trump says, “This deal is bad, we’re not doing it,” that’s not ignorance. It’s clarity.

When Labour says, “We remain committed to exploring options within a robust framework,” that’s someone hiding the knife behind their back.

Markets don’t fear bad news. They fear unclear news. Trump is many things – but unclear isn’t one of them.

Look closer at the behaviour, not the headlines.

Under Trump:

• Taxes were predictable.
• Regulations were cut.
• Energy was cheap.
• Business knew where it stood.

Under the Democrats:

• Rules changed mid-game.
• Energy was moralised.
• Speech was policed.
• Investment hesitated.

Money hates moral lectures. Money loves certainty.

That’s not ideology. That’s gravity.

Now bring it home. Labour’s pitch is always the same:

• Spend now.
• Regulate more.
• Promise growth later.
• Silence criticism.

They talk about fairness while emptying the engine oil. They talk about compassion while making everything more expensive. They talk about control like it’s a virtue – because they don’t pay the price for it. You do.

An “Inconvenient” Truth

Here’s the uncomfortable truth nobody in polite politics wants to say.

Most people don’t care how leaders sound. They care how their lives feel. Can I afford food? Can I heat my home? Can I keep my job? Can my kids get on?

Trump answers those questions like a boss looking at the books. Labour answers them like HR explaining why the targets were missed but the values were upheld.

More contrasts

Critics say Trump “runs the country like a company”. Exactly.

Companies:

• Reward effort.
• Cut waste.
• Fire bad ideas.
• Change course fast.

Labour (and the Tories before them):

• Protect failure.
• Rename waste.
• Promote incompetence.
• Never admit error.

Which one sounds more likely to survive hard times?

So, when people ask, “How can this not be obvious to everyone?” the answer is: It is – if you work in the real world.

If you’ve ever priced a job, hired staff, balanced a budget, worried about next month, you see it instantly. If you live off policy papers and press releases, you don’t.

This isn’t about liking Trump. It’s about recognising results. Polite decline or rude recovery – that’s the real choice.

I’ve watched this movie already. At first, everything looks respectable. Then you look closer. Then closer again. And you realise the mess was hidden behind good manners and long words.

Trump tears the curtain down. Labour wants to hang another one.

History tells you which works.

Common sense tells you the rest.

So, What Actually Works?

Once you strip away the slogans, the outrage, and the fainting couches, the argument is brutally simple.

Countries don’t run on good intentions. They run on incentives.

That’s the bit modern politics refuses to accept – because once you accept it, half the agenda collapses.

Trump understands incentives. Not because he read it in a textbook, but because he’s been skint, rich, skint again, sued, burned, and rebuilt. That leaves a mark.

You learn very quickly what doesn’t work when failure costs you your own money.

Here’s the difference: The left tries to manage outcomes. Business tries to manage behaviour. That’s why one fails and the other adapts.

If you want people to invest, you don’t threaten them. If you want people to work, you don’t punish them. If you want growth, you don’t apologise for success.

Trump doesn’t moralise economics. He just counts.

Look at how he talks about jobs. Not “quality employment pathways”. Not “stakeholder-led workforce frameworks”. Jobs. Real ones. With wages attached.

He talks about factories because factories hire people who don’t write reports for a living.

And when he says “bring it back”, he doesn’t mean with a grant application – he means by making it cheaper to build at home than abroad.

That’s not nationalism. That’s maths.

Trump also understands something else politicians pretend not to see: Energy is the base of everything. Cheap energy means cheaper food, cheaper transport, cheaper manufacturing, lower bills.

That’s why he doesn’t romanticise it.

Drill, baby, drill. Produce. Lower costs. No lectures. No symbolism.

Another thing Trump does – and this really winds people up – is change his mind. If something doesn’t work, he drops it. Loudly. Publicly. Sometimes rudely.

That’s not chaos. That’s feedback.

Politics hates feedback, because feedback exposes mistakes.

And what doesn’t work?

Now look at how Labour talk.

They talk about work like it’s a problem to be solved, not a thing people want. Every job comes with conditions, reviews, compliance and monitoring. At some point, employers stop asking “Can we grow?” and start asking “Is this worth the grief?”

That’s when nothing happens.

Labour treats energy like a morality play. And then acts shocked when bills go up. You can’t heat a home with good intentions.

Labour would rather protect a bad policy than admit it was bad – because admission means someone might ask who signed it off.

In business, that attitude kills companies. In government, it kills countries – just slower.

Why it matters

Here’s why this matters to Britons.

We don’t need American politics. We don’t need American culture wars. What we do need is American bluntness when it comes to reality. If a policy makes things more expensive, it’s bad. If regulation kills jobs, it’s wrong. If spending causes inflation, stop spending.

You don’t need ideology to understand that. You need a calculator.

Trump doesn’t pretend everyone will like him. He just wants the numbers to work.

Labour wants everyone to feel good – while the numbers quietly rot.

That’s why investors move. That’s why jobs move. That’s why money gets nervous.

Money doesn’t listen to speeches. It listens to signals. And Labour sends all the wrong ones.

This isn’t about copying Trump. It’s about copying what works. Clear rules. Low friction. Cheap energy. Reward effort. Admit mistakes.

That’s not right-wing. That’s how Britain used to function before politics became therapy.

So, when they accuse people like me of being “crude”, I’ll take it. Crude (pun intended) keeps the lights on.

To sum up

At the end of the day, no one pays their mortgage with values, vision statements, or managed decline. They pay it with wages. And wages come from businesses that aren’t being strangled by people who’ve never had to make payroll.

That’s the lesson. Not American. Not ideological. Just common sense – the kind Britain used to trust.

Image credit on main page: kjpargeter on Freepik