A good article. 
Virtue-signalling Britain must adapt to Trump’s re-industrialisation
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Industry is beautiful and it’s going to make America great again. That, in essence, is Donald Trump’s domestic strategy, and now he has a thumping mandate to make it happen.
“Manufacturing jobs. We’re going to get them all back. We’re going to get them all back, every single one of them,” Trump vowed at his coronation speech in July.
Trump’s return really feels like a historical moment. The era of globalisation era is over – is the era of re-industrialisation just beginning?
We’ve come full circle since Tony Blair compared it to a force of nature.
“I hear people say we have to stop and debate globalisation,” Blair told Labour’s annual conference in 2005. “You might as well debate whether autumn should follow summer.”
Resistance was futile. We had to be “prepared constantly to change to remain competitive”, and accept living in a state of neurotic insecurity, while all the important decisions were out of our control.
The logic of de-industrialisation went like this. Since labour costs were lower in China we could lose all our factories and the refining industries, such as petrochemicals, that create the materials that the factories need. And therefore we wouldn’t need cheap energy. Following the logic to its grim conclusion, we wouldn’t really need to invest in producing a skilled, technically literate workforce either, if we could just import one for less from another country.
The cost was ravaged communities, and tides of low quality imported junk littering our living rooms and streets. Today, even the man who coined the phrase the “End of History” in 1992 has regrets. Writing in the Financial Times last week, Francis Fukiyama agonised how “neoliberalism” … “reduced the ability of governments to protect those hurt by economic change… The world got a lot richer in the aggregate, while the working class lost jobs and opportunity.”
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A lot of respect for Prez Trump. 
Nato’s effectiveness now depends on European investment in defence
SIR – I am old enough to remember playing in the wreckage of British towns, which looked very similar to those in pictures coming from Ukraine and the Middle East.
Present-day Britons simply do not believe that such tragic damage and associated casualties could happen here again if we do not prepare now to meet the growing threat from Russia and her predatory allies.
It is good that Western leaders are meeting to see what might be done to bolster European defence. But Ben Wallace (Comment, November 7) is right to caution that this should be done within the existing umbrella of Nato.
The alliance works well. There is no need to try to set up some sort of independent Euroforce, whose chain of command and bureaucracy would only complicate Nato’s task in the event of war.
European nations should send a strong signal to Moscow, and others who threaten the future of democracy, that we will spare nothing to defend ourselves via Nato. By far the best way of demonstrating this is to commit to significant increases in defence expenditure – right now.
Air Cdre Michael Allisstone
Chichester, West Sussex
SIR – The result of the American election creates an opportunity for Britain. Labour must forget party considerations and cultivate the friendliest possible relationship with the president-elect. Silly past insults should be put aside. Britain’s safety depends on a strong Nato and more American support for Ukraine.
If Vladimir Putin’s invasion is rewarded, a wider confrontation with Russia comes a step closer. To counter the isolationist voices in the White House, Britain must encourage Donald Trump to see that making America great again includes playing a leading role in European security.
Francis Bown
London E3
SIR – President-elect Trump intends to focus on Chinese expansion, at the expense of Nato’s commitments in Europe.
Britain should consider a similar strategic repositioning, to ensure that Russian aggression is not allowed to succeed in Ukraine.
Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, who is leading Labour’s defence review, is wrong when he says that the UK must be prepared to take on the “deadly quartet” of China, Iran, Russia and North Korea. Given the defence expenditure to which Labour has committed, this is simply not possible. The hard reality is that we need to limit our commitments to guarantee that a weakened Nato is able to stop further expansion by Russia.
Mr Trump will always put America first. We need to take a leaf out of his book and accept that the “special relationship” has been one-way traffic for far too long.
Gp Capt Alan Ferguson RAF (retd)
Hadleigh, Suffolk
