The National:

DONALD Trump’s political career may have died a slow and excruciating death, but his characteristic rhetoric of anti-elitism wrapped around reactionary ideology is alive and well — and it’s one import the UK has no trouble receiving on time.

Andrew Neil’s new channel, GB News, and his “anti-woke” publicity tour surrounding it, makes this all too apparent. Writing in The Express (which might offer a clue as to the channel’s target audience), Neil said he was leaving the BBC for the new role because “the direction of news debate in Britain is increasingly woke and out of touch with the majority of its people”.

The “left-liberal” media, he said, had become “too metropolitan, too southern, and too middle-class”. Switch Southern for “coastal” and you’re well on your way to a full house in American right-winger bingo. None of these criticisms are necessarily untrue, mind you. The problem is the disingenuous way in which they are being weaponised by people who couldn’t care less about listening to “unheard” voices, as Neil put it.

READ MORE: Big money donors help Andrew Neil's GB News channel raise £60m launch fund

Not to mention the irony that the people now making these claims have benefited greatly from those privileges themselves, along with being white and male. (But definitely don’t mention that last part, because while criticising the class or geographic makeup of the media is perfectly fine, talking about race or gender is “identity politics” and therefore A Very Bad Thing. Are you following?)

What might now be described as a “Trumpian” approach to media and politics is just a natural extension of a long and growing tradition of American right-wing politicians and commentators using a symbolic standoff between powerful, stuck-up, city types and the left-behind, ordinary taxpayer with “real” problems to push their own agenda. An agenda which, sadly, has nothing to do with solving those problems and everything to do with diverting attention from systemic unfairness and onto other marginalised groups of people.

The National: George Galloway has expressed his support for GB News, perhaps thinking it will strengthen Unionism in ScotlandGeorge Galloway has expressed his support for GB News, perhaps thinking it will strengthen Unionism in Scotland

Here in the UK, the right have always been good at scapegoating. But the “culture war” language and the attacks on the “mainstream” from people who are as mainstream as it gets seem to be a newer development. Having a broadcaster which advances this worldview is uncharted territory, and although (in keeping with regulations) GB News’ CEO says the channel will be “impartial”, everything about how it has been promoted so far would suggest otherwise.

Remember, Fox News’ tagline is “fair and balanced”. And who said Americans couldn’t do irony?

With Andrew Neil at the helm, an outspoken opponent of Scottish independence, it’s not difficult to imagine GB News’ commentary on that particular topic straying from the realms of impartiality either.

READ MORE: Think BBC is biased against independence? Just wait for Andrew Neil and co

It’s no surprise that George Galloway came out in support of the channel and Neil’s comments on Monday, tweeting that the BBC “IS too woke ....and too determined to see the worst in Britain over Brexit and over separatism”. Trying to understand the inner workings of the mind of George Galloway is a whole other rabbit hole to fall down, but one can only assume he believes GB News will help to turn the tide of popular support towards Unionism in Scotland.

The unfortunate reality for those who seek to preserve the Union is that the more that right-wing and downright embarrassing ventures champion their cause – be that Britain's answer to Fox News or the latest quirky Unionist party to spring up in Scotland – the more damage will be done to its credibility. If Labour allying with the Tories through Better Together was a mistake, this takes it to a whole other level.

But perhaps the bigger and as yet unanswered question is what the consequences will be of an increasingly Americanised and polarised framing of news and political debates in the UK. The impact which the arrival of GB News might have on that fraught landscape isn’t quite so easily dismissed.