Why a Scottish Liberal's 60-year-old speech helps explain how to respond to Donald Trump

It is said that those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. Never has that felt more true than in the darkening times we face today.

It was fitting, therefore, that in another week of Trumpian chaos, last Friday in Orkney we took a moment to reflect upon 75 years since Jo Grimond was first elected to represent the Northern Isles in parliament. His legacy, as an unabashed advocate for liberalism and for a head-on approach to hard political issues, remains just as potent to this day.

Cuban Missile Crisis

Looking over Jo’s most celebrated speech from 1963 as Liberal leader tells a tale. It came in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the world came as close as it ever has to nuclear conflict; a moment when debates over “imperial projects” felt uncomfortably fresh; a time when democracy in the Western world was fragile, and when allying closely with Europe felt increasingly urgent.

We may think that the dangers we face today are unprecedented (and in some ways perhaps they are) but history has a way of circling back on itself. When Jo warned that “Europe still needs Britain, and Britain, Europe” and called for a moment of “political initiative” to build partnerships, it feels as timely and as necessary now as it did then.

Jo also had a ready explanation for the rise of Donald Trump and other far-right forces: “Dictatorships do not primarily arise from the ambitions of wicked men… Dictatorships arise when democracy ceases to serve the interests of the ordinary people.”

It is a useful lesson for those who want to see the Trumps and Farages of the world as the sole authors of our current woes. They are a threat to the future of liberal democracy in their own right, but they are also a symptom of our own failures. Our failure to face up to anti-democratic forces, our failure to make an economy that works for everyone – these are the deeper problems which empower populists offering political disruption and destruction.

Difficult decisions

For years, we (and I must count myself in that sorry number as much as anyone) have put off hard decisions and ignored uncomfortable realities – about defence, about our international relations, and about the anti-democratic forces which have been building momentum.

That was particularly true under the last Conservative government but there is too much continuity in approach under Labour. There are difficult discussions to be had on taxation and spending, on our economy and our defence, but we cannot expect things to get better if politicians avoid facing them head-on.

After all, to quote the immortal Jo Grimond one more time: “If the government will not face awkward decisions, why should the people?” The sound of the guns is getting louder. We need to march towards them or they will overtake us.

Alistair Carmichael is the Scottish Liberal Democrat MP for Orkney and Shetland.