A city once paved with gold is today riddled with Isis checkpoints, according to Maga world. Dick Whittington found no gold on London’s streets. The 2026 version of the fabled character would have similar trouble locating London’s sharia-governed no-go zones. But the myth of London as a third-world sinkhole is now central to Maga politics. Restoring Britain’s allegedly vanishing character is also an official goal of Donald Trump’s foreign policy.
The question is why? It is not enough to succeed, said Gore Vidal; others must fail. That London is doing fine in spite of being an immigrant city — and partly because of it — is a provocation to the Maga movement on both sides of the Atlantic. London serves as the most visible symbol of a Europe that Trump’s national security strategy claims is facing “civilisational erasure”. If you add in Silicon Valley’s animus towards EU and UK digital safety regulations, the coming year promises escalation in the transatlantic ideological conflict. London gets star billing.
Not a day goes by when Trump’s close ally, Steve Bannon, does not cite London as a sharia-governed city. Bannon has shifted his daily War Room broadcast from Washington to Texas to back a state referendum that would ban sharia law (Prop 10). Other US states are pushing similar propositions. Rhetoric against the Islamic threat looks set to return to centre stage in the Republican midterm election campaign. “London is exhibit A in our warning,” says Bannon.