There's Nothing For You Here by Fiona Hill
Fiona Hill has a remarkable story to tell. She grew up in the north east to a working-class mining family during the 1980s when Thatcherism caused her dad to lose his job and her home town of Bishop Auckland was economically devastated. And yet from such an unpromising start, she rose to a prestigious academic role at Harvard before being appointed to The White House as an advisor and member of the National Security Council.
The book seems set, therefore, for an inspirational tale of someone struggling against the odds to reach a position of power with an opportunity to influence world affairs. There are, however, two things that subvert that narrative trajectory. Hill herself accepts that her story is remarkable but that she is not - she explains her rise, with an academic’s precision, as a series of fortunate connections and serendipitous opportunities that allowed her the chance to flourish against the odds and achieve her potential. This analysis, presented with a cool, righteous anger, points up all the structural obstacles that make her story an exception rather than an example for all the talented young people trapped in the UK’s left behind communities.
The other reason her story takes an unexpected turn is that her role in the White House was supporting the unexpected president, Trump, and all the madness that entailed. It’s often forgotten that during his first term Trump was wrong footed when he first entered The White House. Perhaps because he didn’t expect to win or, just as likely, because he was arrogant, there was no plan in place for his administration. Therefore, he tended to rely on his family and often the last person he had spoken to about a topic; but he also turned to many established political administrators and experts. So not quite the clearing out of the swamp, or at least not in his first couple of years.
That’s where Hill comes in. She had established herself as a Russia expert at Harvard and was studying in that country during its nascent post-Soviet era of wild west capitalism. Therefore, it was only logical that the foreign affairs experts Trump pulled off the shelf into his cabinet turned to Hill for insight on the newly rampant Russia – by 2016 Putin had already begun his land grab of the Crimea. Hill was there when Trump dissed his own intelligence advisors in front of the world media by, in effect, believing Putin’s assertion that there was no interference by Russia in the American electoral process despite the FBI’s detailed report to the contrary. Hill was also in the room on many other occasions when Trump went rogue by trusting his personal relationship with the populists over the carefully agreed approach drawn up by her and many other people with a better understanding of the policy discussion – that is to say, any understanding!
You may think you have plumbed the depths of your disdain for Trump’s venality, stupidity and danger for the world. I thought so, too, but reading Hill’s uncomfortable account of trying to work within such dysfunction, my horror and incredulity only increased. Understandably, Hill got out as quickly as she could. She was able to cope with the misogyny prevalent among the macho world of American politics (and, by the way, academia) but, having politely but firmly tried to point out the best geopolitical strategies to pursue, she had crossed a line. She had dared to provide guidance to the Donald and nobody was allowed to do that in his Oval Office; and that was especially the case for a woman like Hill, intelligent and articulate, but who does not look like Sky News presenters, the standard ‘look’ for female advisors in Trump’s administration.
She eventually ended up testifying against Trump in his first impeachment trial. Her testimony was precise and supported by evidence but it effectively marked the end of her involvement in front line politics.
Hill is married to an American and is a citizen of the USA. This allows her to make some interesting comparisons between the economic and political trajectory of the two countries as they have both moved from the free market policies established in the Reagan-Thatcher era that dismantled the old industries, without providing an economic plan to create stable, equable societies. Now we see the consequences in both countries of increasingly ineffective public services and welfare provision, divided societies and a lack of confidence about the future as global trends have caused both Americans and Brits to turn inwards and backward-looking. Hill hints at the possibility that where America has led with Trump, Britain may soon have to cope with more extreme leaders offering more extreme, simple solutions. She also makes the point that this loss of confidence and stability is similar to that in post-Soviet Russia and is what Putin has exploited to entrench his own position.
It is this comparison which links the disparate parts of this memoir. After Hill’s personal story, we move to her time with Trump and her shocking exposure of his administration and then she returns to her background by looking at the systematic failures that blight the lives of many ordinary people in her native country and adopted home country. Nevertheless, she ends on a slightly more positive note by offering a series of proposals to, in effect, level up. To her it’s not just an election winning slogan but crucial for people who come from her type of background. She doesn’t want them to be told by their parents, as she was, that “there is nothing for you, here.”
Despite her own remarkable ascent, this is a sobering book but always compelling and insightful. Recommended.