Say one thing about US-UK relations. Say the tail doesn’t wag the dog.

The UK is a political vassal and military colony of the United States. If you don’t accept this, grow up. If you do, you already understand that a lot of what happens in the US washes up here before long. Case in point, the weird US-style homophobic Christian sportswear evangelism in evidence on our streets lately.

Fascist leisurewear aside, what else is happening right now in the US?

Well, a rapidly developing internal (dare we say, civil?) war by the Trump government on a nebulously defined ‘left’.

This war being prosecuted using the military and other repressive security agencies might seem novel, sure. But, it runs along tracks established after 9/11, using the frameworks, fantasies, laws, and sensibilities of the War on Terror.

The current inciting ‘9/11 event’ being used to power this war forward was the September killing of far-right influencer Charlie Kirk.

Trump’s new war

An excellent report on the aftermath of that killing published in Rolling Stone Magazine this week said as much:

The memos and legal justifications leaned heavily on the infrastructure and the statutes left behind from George W. Bush’s Global War on Terror.

Trump administration aides and attorneys talked among themselves about how the Kirk slaying made it clear they needed a new “war on terror,” in their words, but one launched and branded by Donald J. Trump, and aimed straight at the homegrown domestic enemies of MAGA world.

Rolling Stone aren’t the first to make this connection between war overseas and war at home. Spencer Ackerman, a specialist on the forever wars and their domestic mutations, said on 15 September:

Speaking of horror and miscalculation, it’s been hard to avoid the War on Terror templates on display in the aftermath of the Kirk assassination.

More details of Trump’s rationale for sending the military after his internal foes have been reported by US security reporter Ken Klippenstein here and here. You should probably read them.

Portland and Chicago

Yesterday, 6 October, we published an excellent overview of Trump’s invasion plans for Portland and Chicago. We said:

Both cities are Democrat-led, marking the latest in a string of similar actions against the cities of the Republicans’ political opponents, including Los Angeles and Washington.

For its part, however, Portland has temporarily blocked the president’s orders twice in court – first, when he tried to deploy Oregon’s own troops, and later when he ordered the relocation of Californian personnel to Portland.

Trump and his staff have spent recent days repeating the word “insurrection” on camera a lot. It seems clear that this is a way of manufacturing consent to unleash the Insurrection Act.

In fact, it is so clear that even the famously useless-in-the-face-of-fascism US Democrats seem to get it.

Here:

Everything Trump is doing now is a preamble for his regime’s real goal: to invoke the Insurrection Act.

I don’t want to unduly alarm you, but you need to be aware of this imminent danger. It’s unfolding very rapidly. https://t.co/BuMlO6gAUM

— Robert Reich (@RBReich) October 6, 2025

And here:

Pritzker: “The Trump administration is following a playbook: Cause chaos, create fear and confusion, make it seem that peaceful protesters are a mob by firing gas pellets and tear gas canisters at them. Why? To create the pretext for invoking the Insurrection Act.” pic.twitter.com/bSlHVEaQPo

— The Bulwark (@BulwarkOnline) October 6, 2025

Insurrection act

There is a good breakdown of what exactly the Insurrection Act is here. This CNN analysis also quotes Trump aide Stephen Miller telling reporters Monday that a judge’s ruling against military deployments was a form of “legal insurrection” against the government:

There is an effort to delegitimize the core function of the federal government of enforcing our immigration laws and our sovereignty.

Obviously, the counter-argument to Miller’s claim would be that legal checks and balances are an essential and normal part of any functioning democracy. Checks and balances which Trump wants to get round by using the Insurrection Act. That’s also why Trump and his cohort have been claiming (entirely falsely) that the target cities are basically in a state of social collapse.

As CNN point out the legislation Trump is trying to invoke is, at least in US terms, ancient:

The law allows the deployment of troops in the US in certain limited situations. First passed in 1792, it was last tweaked in 1871.

Probably should have updated that, lads.

Can it happen here?

The UK and US contexts are not the same. For example, there are major constitutional differences. And we don’t have a national guard-type militia. It’s also true that the Trumpian far-right aren’t in power – yet.

But as we know, authoritarian danger Keir Starmer seems to be trying his level best to midwife Nigel Farage’s Reform UK into government.

And Starmer is doing that while adding all sorts of new repressive measures. Repressive measures, we note, which will be wielded with enormous energy by whatever far-right government or coalition takes power at the next election.

What we do have – and have had for over two decades – is a steady expansion of easily abusable laws, created at least partly under the rubric of the War on Terror. For example Blair’s controversial counter terror legislation; The Snooper’s Charter; The Policing Bill; the obviously very controversial decision to proscribe activist groups like Palestine Action, and the current attempt to expand that.

Spy Cops Bill

We also have a dilapidated and desperate Tory party pushing further right, even offering a UK version of Trump’s private militia ICE. While is it funny that they can’t even spell Britain right on their conference chocolate bars, the Tories 100+ MP’s could still end up in coalition with Reform – or even fully absorbed by it.

If we delve back into the Canary archives, we’ll also find that the Spy Cops Bill allows state security agencies, and even elite undercover military units, to break the law. You can thank us on Twitter when the SAS are kicking your door in.

As we wrote at the time:

It seems likely that special forces units on domestic counter-terrorism duties could use the new legislation. Although it’s hard to fully understand the implications without disclosure on the matter which is unlikely given covert military units and activity are exempt from freedom of information requests under national security rules.

The long and short of it is we don’t know what the country will look like by the 2029 elections. If the US experience offers an insight, it is that the legacies of the global War on Terror will shape our politics profoundly in the coming years.

Featured image via YouTube screenshot/CBS Morningsc

By Joe Glenton

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