Milei Fandom surge on the UK right. You won’t believe the lessons learned…
We can forgive Britain’s opposition Conservative Party leader for not having read the Buenos Aires Times of July 21 before she told the Financial Times she aspires to be Britain’s Javier Milei.
The BA Times may not be on the regulation reading list of British politicians, whether in government or out of it.
So Kemi Badenoch, the UK Conservative Party leader, boldly told the FT on July 23 “Milei is the template” (paywall). It wasn’t a reference to the Argentinian president’s weird hair – a look that’s been defined as “not quite a mullet, moptop or mohawk but some complex combination of the three”. Ms Badenoch was celebrating Mr Milei’s predilection for waving a chainsaw to illustrate his zeal for slashing the state and cutting spending, including on several welfare provisions.
Might assiduous reading of the BA Times of July 21 have prompted a more cautious assessment of Javier Milei from Ms Badenoch?
The BA Times reported that Argentina’s economy, supervised by its state-slashing President Milei, had contracted in May for the third time this year.
Quoting government data, the paper said wage declines and rising unemployment were likely to have put pressure on consumer spending in Milei’s Argentina. While the data noted a five per cent expansion in the Argentine economy from a year ago, it also pointed to a fragile consumer outlook with unemployment in the first quarter reaching its highest level in nearly four years.
That’s not exactly a sunshine picture for Argentina, where Mr Milei won the November 2023 presidential election on the promise of economic rebirth. It would come, he said, from hacking brutally at the state and wholesale privatisation. In his time as president, Mr Milei has been true to his promise, cutting huge chunks of state spending, and to be fair, also reducing inflation.
That said, surely rising unemployment, consumer hesitancy and growing desperation among the poorest and most vulnerable sections of society is not a viable template for any politician, anywhere?
But Milei Fandom among British politicians is becoming a thing. After all, the Big Don, President Trump and Javier Milei are seen to be big buddies, at least publicly.
In citing Javier Milei as her role model, the Conservative Party leader appears to be following in the wake of another British politician, Nigel Farage. The Reform Party leader recently offered Mr Milei’s economic management by chainsaw as an admirable example of hard pruning the state.
So, what do we learn from this outbreak of Milei Fandom on the UK right?
It’s pretty simple: Time for a subscription to the Buenos Aires Times?
