It Wasn’t Done Properly

I was watching an interview on YouTube the other day, on Vlad Vexler’s channel, where he had Anthony Scaramucci on to talk about Donald Trump. It was an odd pairing, but quite a revealing one. You had a philosopher explaining the theory of what’s going wrong, and a man who’d been inside the circus describing how it actually feels when the ringmaster walks in.

Scaramucci’s most useful point was not really about Trump as an individual. It was about the people who back him. Both he and Vexler kept returning to the same underlying theme: a feeling of lost agency. A sense among many voters that decisions affecting their lives are increasingly made somewhere else, by someone else, and that their role is reduced to occasionally choosing which set of professional managers explains things to them afterwards.

That loss of agency curdles into anger remarkably quickly. Not some carefully worked through policy platform, just a growing sense that the system has not delivered and is not listening. Trump, for all his faults, looks like a wrecking ball, and that is precisely the attraction. You can see a milder version of the same instinct in parts of Reform support here. Not identical, but close enough to recognise. The appeal is disruption.

And there is a logic to that. If you feel excluded, appeals to “stability” sound like a request to preserve someone else’s comfort. So people take a gamble. They may not even particularly like the man holding the hammer, but they quite like the idea of the wall coming down.

What Scaramucci adds, though, is a slightly more uncomfortable layer. He suggests that if you want to understand Trump himself, you have to look at two drivers at the same time: narcissism, and money. Not ideology, not some grand alternative system, but a combination of personal validation and very practical self-interest.

Seen through that lens, the wrecking ball starts to look less like an end in itself and more like a tool. If holding power allows you to protect yourself and enrich your circle, then staying in control becomes rather important. Scaramucci’s blunt take is that Trump would pardon himself and everyone around him if he could, and that without that protection the legal exposure for people in his orbit becomes significant. If he were no longer there to provide that cover, whether through losing office or simply no longer being there, then those who have benefited from that arrangement could find themselves in serious trouble. Whether you agree with that or not, it shifts the picture. The supporters may be voting to smash the system. He may be using that momentum to keep it in a shape that suits him.

The problem is the assumption that sits underneath the whole arrangement. The unspoken deal is that if the system is smashed, the people at the top will suffer most. That the pain will somehow flow upwards. It’s a comforting thought. It just doesn’t match how the world tends to behave.

Capital moves. Labour doesn’t.

If things become unstable, money does not stay put out of principle. It hedges, relocates, waits, or buys cheaply when others are forced to sell. The people who can do that are usually the ones already doing rather well. Everyone else is tied to place. Job, house, family, school, all the things that make life real rather than theoretical. When the shock comes, it does not land evenly. It rarely does.

Vexler’s point about institutions is that they depend on good faith, and that populists exploit that by ignoring the rules. True enough, but it only explains half the story. Institutions also lose trust when they become remote, self-referential, and quietly protective of their own interests. If decisions feel pre-cooked, if outcomes look oddly consistent no matter who votes for what, then people stop believing the game is being played straight. That is not a philosophical failure, it is a practical one, and it is how you end up with a queue of volunteers for something disruptive.

Which brings us to Europe. Trump is not a passing American eccentricity that can be waited out. He is one example of a broader shift. The next version may be more competent, more disciplined, and far harder to handle. So this is not a holding pattern until things return to normal. It is a change in the weather.

And there is a further complication. If the people drawn to that disruptive instinct see no real improvement in their own position, even after backing someone like Donald Trump, they are unlikely to conclude that the method was wrong. They are more likely to conclude that it was not done properly. That the tool was blunt, not that the idea was flawed.

You can see the same manoeuvre in the Brexit argument. For some, disappointing outcomes are not evidence that the project was oversold, under-thought, or structurally flawed. They are taken as proof that it was not fully or correctly implemented. “Brexit wasn’t done properly” becomes less a critique than a reason to double down.

At that point, the search is not for stability, but for competence. Not someone to swing harder for effect, but someone who can apply pressure more effectively and with clearer intent.

And that is where it becomes more dangerous. If the next figure from that camp has watched Donald Trump turn power into protection, influence and wealth, why would he not do the same? The people who voted for disruption may find themselves with someone even better at using the system for personal advantage while insisting it is being torn down on their behalf.

Externally, the consequences follow. A more transactional, more self-interested United States becomes a less predictable and less trusted partner. Alliances fray, cooperation becomes conditional, and the country edges further towards a system that looks less like a broad democracy and more like a competition between well-connected interests.

That is why Mark Carney’s approach stands out. No theatrics, no flattery, no public sulking. Just a clear understanding that you deal with what is in front of you while preparing for what comes next. More importantly, he has been explicit that the old order is fraying and that Europe needs to act like it. Standing on its own two feet is not a slogan, it is a bill. Defence capability that is actually usable, energy policy that does not depend on wishful thinking, industrial capacity that can survive shocks, and trade policy that is not written on the assumption that someone else will keep the system stable.

That is the uncomfortable bit. It is expensive, politically awkward, and requires countries that quite like disagreeing with each other to do rather less of it. It is much easier to talk about strategic autonomy than to fund it or agree on it. But dependency on an unpredictable ally is still dependency, however politely you describe it.

And then back to the people who feel left out of it all.

They do need to feel listened to, and that does mean tangible change. Not slogans, not warm words, not another consultation exercise. Real improvements in pay, costs, services, and a sense that the rules apply evenly. But it is not just about handing out benefits. People are not simply asking for a bit more money. They are asking for fairness and for a system that does not feel rigged.

At the moment, the structure leans the wrong way. We tax income, which is visible and tied to place, more consistently than wealth, which is mobile and often sheltered. With enough advice, income can be softened at the edges, but it rarely disappears. Wealth can sit, grow, and be rearranged. That difference matters, because it feeds the suspicion that the system is harder on those without options.

The answer is not a neat switch to “tax wealth instead”. Wealth moves as well, just differently, and taxing it is more complicated than people pretend. But leaving the imbalance untouched is not neutral either. If labour carries the weight while capital keeps its flexibility, the anger will keep replenishing itself.

So the lesson from all of this is not simply that Trump is a problem, or that Reform is dangerous, though both may be true. It is that anger without a credible outlet turns into a desire to break things, and breaking things is a gamble where the risks are not evenly shared.

Europe has had its warning. Its voters have had one too. The next version will likely be quieter, more polished, and more effective. If nothing else changes, people will back it again and see what, if anything, feels different the second time around.