Why Mega wave has come to stuttering halt

The helicopter mission of JD Vance, Donald Trump’s vice-president and chief Maga theoretician, to give last-minute support to Hungary’s Viktor Orbán had one clear outcome: the other guy won hands down. The landslide victory at the start of this week of Peter Magyar over Orbán, whose closeness to Trump has been one of his campaign themes, is a signal that the days when “America First” evangelists paraded spin-offs of their national-populist movement in the “Mega” (Make Europe Great Again) movement may be numbered.

The movement set out to sort out Britain and Europe’s woes – by exporting its bullish recipe for change and targeting opponents of its worldview. This week Trump himself picked a fight with the Pope, and JD Vance “popesplained” that the pontiff should “be careful” if he opines on matters of theology (which one might say is the papal day job). That went down badly with Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, previously a Trump favourite, who intervened forcefully on behalf of Pope Leo despite their differences on immigration and asylum.

Vance also argued that the attacks on Iran fitted the category of a “just war” – a complex pivot for a brand of Republicanism that has held up Iraq and Afghanistan as reckless involvements by the US. Upbraiding the UK for being an immigration-saturated country pursuing “insane” policies and calling the decline in US-UK relations “sad” is a reminder that the president sees his worldview as something he expects allies to copy. Yet too much pummelling of Britain by a US president can bring out a stubborn British dislike of being bullied – across the political spectrum.

The message had been that Maga Republicans understand Europe’s problems and remedies better than Europeans do themselves. It led to a wide alignment of right-wing leaders looking for benediction from the White House: Giorgia Meloni and Vance held a mutual admiration press conference about “shared values” at the launch of the Winter Olympics in Milan. I also watched its peak performance when JD Vance took to the stage at the Munich Security Conference last year, bludgeoning his German hosts on their immigration record and calling for greater support of the far-right AfD.

But the “Mega” wave has come to a stuttering halt as more figures on the further right of politics look to distance themselves from the endorsements for which they once competed. A new disenchantment has set in since the US president launched his war on Iran, described by one senior member of the European parliament, Fabrice Leggeri, of France’s National Rally, “difficult to comprehend”. Voters attracted to these parties are more choosy about what they take from the Trump era than Maga luminaries suppose. They still like the insurrectionist style and anti-immigration rhetoric: however, they are less keen on the new doctrine of intervention from Washington. The war in Iran and its spread across the Gulf, resulting in higher energy prices, is a headache for parties that have opposed embracing Green policies and, in some cases in German regions, even resisted the attempt to prod motorists towards EVs.

Many also warmed to Trump’s “Peace President” promise, in which he would disengage America from “forever wars”. Squaring that with the images of the spread of conflict across the Gulf, and Trump’s wildly varying explanations of the purpose of the enterprise, and chances of measurable success is hard. Reform in the UK has switched from outright support for knocking out the mullah regime in Tehran to Nigel Farage fretting about what has ensued: “I am worried about what his war aims are, and it is dragging on for longer than we all thought it would.”

The Reform UK leader told me not long ago that he saw Trump “all the time” and boasted of his access to the Trump family Florida base in Mar-a-Lago. On his latest trip in early March, however, he was effectively stood up by his host when Trump changed his plans and did not attend the dinner. Now the party is spinning the more arms-length relationship as a tribute to its strength: as one of its most senior MPs describes the shift, “There was always going to be a different relationship as we have got closer to being the real opposition to Labour. It’s a different situation to the friendship of the first Trump era – but right now, a bit more distance is actually OK for us.” In other words, being friends with Trump is now a far less clear benefit.

It is also getting harder to square with socially conservative voters Trump’s more outlandish statements and his tendency to use profanities – as well as this week the bizarre posting of an image that styled him as a Christ-like figure. A touch too much personality cult and uncertainty about what Trump might do next is beginning to make the Maga alignment more difficult than I observed it when I travelled with Liz Truss to the US last year and watched her compete with Farage and Boris Johnson for closeness to the presidency in a wave of Maga enthusiasm. Nowadays, Johnson prefers to advocate for continuing support for Ukraine than praise the man he was once keen to share thumbs-up selfies with.