It is increasingly difficult to separate trade from ideology. In the latest transatlantic entanglement, JD Vance, vice-president of the United States and the dark id of the Trump administration, has reportedly made the repeal of UK hate speech laws a precondition for a new trade agreement. What we are witnessing is not diplomacy but a hostile takeover, with American culture war priorities weaponised in the service of capital accumulation.
“No free speech, no deal,” said a source close to Vance, as if trade policy now begins and ends with permission to abuse minorities online.
According to The Independent, the US administration has been “working very hard” on an agreement with the Labour government, though “agreement” might be the wrong word. The real action is happening elsewhere: not across negotiating tables, but in think tanks, Twitter rants, and barely coded threats. Either Britain scraps its limited protections for minorities, or Trump brings the tariffs hammer down. That such grotesque demands are even on the table tells you all you need to know about the current balance of power.
Starmer, ever the pragmatist, thought an early visit to the White House might earn goodwill. Instead, he’s being offered chlorinated values instead of chlorinated chicken. This isn’t just about tariffs; it’s about bending the knee. For Vance and the MAGA right, the UK is a cautionary tale, a once-proud empire now so riddled with “wokeness” it locks people up for wrong think.
“There’s a real cultural affinity,” Vance told UnHerd, as if Britain weren’t being threatened into deregulating hatred for the sake of friendship.
Vance and his allies are reportedly obsessed with the “fall of Western civilisation”, a familiar refrain from the American hard right. In this fantasy, Britain stands as both example and warning: the nation that fell to the speech police, where women are arrested for silent prayer and Elon Musk’s tweets cause international incidents. The case of Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, tried for praying outside an abortion clinic, has become a talking point for Republican operatives. For a crowd that swears by liberty and law-and-order in the same breath, the contradiction is part of the aesthetic.
Britain has already offered to drop its digital services tax. It won’t be enough. Vance wants hate speech laws gone, and the upcoming Online Safety Act scrapped. Labour has so far said no, but watch the language. “Not a feature of the talks,” said a Downing Street source, which is political code for: not yet. And while the government publicly insists it won’t be importing hormone-laced beef or chlorinated poultry, the real import is ideological. In Trump’s worldview, deregulated hate is a national export.
When trade becomes a vector for culture war enforcement, sovereignty is no longer about law but about compliance.
Vance is officially leading the negotiations. Howard Lutnick, Trump’s trade secretary, does the formalities, but it’s Vance who sets the terms, and he’s making them up as he goes, with the Heritage Foundation and the ghost of Andrew Breitbart whispering in his ear. This isn’t a trade deal, it’s a manifesto, imposed at gunpoint.
The US offers little more than a handshake and a deadline; Britain’s meant to put its legal protections on the bonfire.
It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Labour is being drawn into a trap of its own making. Starmer’s strategy of proximity—hug Trump close, hope for concessions, has yielded exactly the opposite. The Americans sense weakness. Musk’s online tantrums, arrests over tweets, and the government’s tin-eared response have only emboldened the US right. And Britain’s press, for the most part, is playing along.
The truth is, Britain’s hate speech laws are already patchy, selectively enforced, and barely protecting anyone. What Vance wants is not their reform but their symbolic disavowal. His target isn’t legal principle, but cultural victory: the spectacle of a Labour government bowing to the terms of the American right. That’s the show.
The same applies to the Online Safety Act. It’s flawed, sure, part censorship fig leaf, part corporate handout, but what Vance sees in it is the threat of any regulation at all. And what tech lobbyists see is a chance to expand further, faster, freer, without British courts or civil society getting in the way.
What matters is the drift: the slow, humiliating slide into compliance, dressed up as diplomacy.
There’s a temptation to treat all this as posturing. A bit of Republican muscle-flexing before the serious men in suits get on with it. But there are no serious men left in the White House, just ideologues, cronies, and billionaires. And Starmer’s technocratic stoicism is no match for a political movement that sees deals not as compromise but as conquest.
To get a foot in Trump’s market, Starmer’s being asked to bin our laws and smile while doing it. And unless someone says no—properly, publicly, with something more than a bland statement to the press—there’s no reason to think they won’t.
This is where we are now: a global capitalism so deranged that it exports not just goods but the very tools of its own authoritarian turn. Hate speech deregulation isn’t an unfortunate side effect of the deal; it is the deal. A few years ago, it was chlorinated chicken. Now it’s culture war chickenfeed for the base.
What Vance is saying, what Trump’s White House is doing, is perfectly clear. You want access to the American market? Then gut your protections, let bigotry flow, and call it freedom. That’s the price. That’s the offer. Take it or leave it.
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