One thousand four hundred and thirty days, nineteen hours and five minutes.

That’s how long, at the time of writing, we have until President Trump’s second term will end. In other words, we’ve done just 31 out of 1,461 days so far…so just over a month.

And it’s staggering to think how much has happened in that time. If he keeps up this pace I dread to think what the world will look like by the time the next US election is held, both on the international stage, and within the very fabric of the US administrative state.

An estimated 75,000 federal workers have been fired or forced to resign since the inauguration. These workers aren’t just from USAID but from the Education Department, the Federal Aviation Administration, and, stunningly, the National Nuclear Security Administration.

At first, these layoffs may look like a consequence of Elon Musk’s proximity to the President, given his affinity for mass firings. But there’s something far more significant and ideological at play.

When asked about the job cuts, the President has dismissed them as necessary to find fraud and abuse. He has also said they are needed to root out corruption. Recently, evoking Napoleon, he described such action as necessary to save the US.

It’s worth sitting with this language for a moment. Not only is it classic Trumpian but it’s increasingly the rhetoric of the newly emboldened right wing.

While today’s new-right remains as infatuated with the past as their conservative forebears, the way they talk about it is completely different. Less interested in conserving per se, the new-right uses the anxieties of today as proof that our way of life is slipping through our fingers, and that without a political revolution, like the kind we are seeing in the US, it will be too late to correct course.

It’s a mass of contradictions – they talk of disrupting the status quo to return to how things used to be. Such language is highly appealing in an age where people yearn for change. Those who are convinced the world is heading in the wrong direction, are less concerned than they possibly should be by promises to rip up the rulebook.

Contrast all this with the language of the left. While Labour’s fixation with and pursuit of growth is understandable, it does frame change as something that can only be incrementally achieved, and something that doesn’t look too different to what we already have – more of the same, if you like.

It isn’t exciting, or radical. There is no bold vision for the kind of transformation many want to see in the way society works, the way we are addressing systemic failures and crises in health, housing, climate etc.

What is needed is a broader, bolder vision for the future, but an inclusive one, that brings the public along with it. While it’s understandable after the chaos of the Conservative years that Labour would want to adopt a technocratic, managerial stance, they must understand that a focus on targets gives people no sense of being part of a collective endeavour. What is

occurring in the US is a warning of what can happen if you ignore these calls. I just hope our Government is paying attention.