Project 1921 / 1973 / 2025
If we can tear our eyes away from the early days of the Starmer government and cast an eye upon other big electoral events in 2024, we find Rick Perlstein providing some much-needed perspective on Project 2025’s antecedents:
One thing that especially grates on me as a historian is how much of the discourse treats Project 2025 as if it’s some novel thing. I mean, what about Project 1921?
I refer, of course, to the administration of Warren G. Harding, who intoned in his inaugural address of dedicating himself to “the omission of unnecessary interference of Government with business.”
Not so much a radical new idea as it is the latest incarnation of several long-standing right wing objectives, then.
With the Conservative party’s MPs about to see whose turn it is to succeed Rishi Sunak, how long will it be until some Tufton Street think tank brings us a report proclaiming that Project 2029 1 is the way forward for the UK?
Never mind that the UK government is structured very differently from the US government. The important thing, especially if Trump wins, will be to capture the zeitgeist.)↩︎