‘Trump is not a fan of Brexit because he loves the UK – it’s because of his hatred for the EU’
ALTHOUGH many American presidents have paid visits to England, there has never been a visit quite like Donald Trump’s this week. But then, has there ever been a president quite like him?
Almost as soon as Trump was inaugurated, British Prime Minister Theresa May rushed to Washington to meet him, with what many of her compatriots thought unseemly haste. It wasn’t made better when they embarrassingly held hands and were photographed in the Oval Office with the bust of Winston Churchill between them.
They exchanged the usual platitudes about the special relationship, or what the former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder rightly called the relationship so special that only one side knows it existed.
The prime minister extended an invitation to Trump to pay a state visit to London. This is something presidents have enjoyed only late in their terms, or in some cases not at all, but the prospect of driving down The Mall in a gilded horsedrawn coach to a magnificent banquet at Buckingham Palace delighted Trump.
Alas, by now his unpopularity in Britain is so intense he can barely show his face in the streets of London, and this is well-nigh a private visit.
Trump is being helicoptered from the American ambassador’s residence in Regent’s Park to the prime minister’s country residence, Chequers, both heavily guarded, and to Blenheim Palace, the birthplace of the president’s supposed hero, Churchill.
The curious nature of the visit could be highlighted by the official absence of the one British politician Trump seems eager to see, and who may return the eagerness, although it’s not clear what they have to give one another apart from bromantic mutual admiration.
Until this week, Boris Johnson was foreign secretary. He attended May’s crisis cabinet meeting at
Chequers and offered her his full support. Three days later, he resigned, taking care to make it a photo op, with the picture of him writing his resignation letter released to the media.
Despite the superficial gulf between the coarse New York real estate tycoon and the silvertongued classics scholar, there may be a real affinity (and not just because of the hair-raisingly awful treatment of women they have in common) that could paradoxically help explain just why the “special relationship” is such a fantasy.
Two years ago, Johnson threw his weight behind the Leave campaign in the Brexit referendum – to decisive effect, many people think.
Characteristically, he wrote two columns for the ‘Daily Telegraph’. One argued for Remain and one for Leave. At the last moment, he tossed a mental coin – or, one may suppose, he decided which would advance his personal ambitions.
The Brexit referendum was just over two years ago, in June 2016. Then came the upset of November, the election of Donald Trump, which many people found and still find as hard to believe as Brexit.
Since then, quite apart from his egregious conduct over immigrants, his glad-handing with Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin, and his derision of Nato, Trump has never missed an opportunity to say what a good thing Brexit is, which is none of his bloody business.
His enthusiasm for Brexit isn’t because Trump feels any deep love for British tradition, but because he hates the EU as a competitor. And he can scarcely be bothered by what looks like Russian interference in the referendum since he was almost certainly helped by Russian interference in his own election.
Three years ago, Johnson said Trump was “clearly out of his mind” and displaying “a quite stupefying ignorance that makes him, frankly, unfit to hold the office of president of the United States”. Recently he has taken to singing the president’s praises, and comparing him favourably with May.
BY DOING so, he inadvertently performs a service – and so does Trump when he boorishly intervenes in British politics.
Churchill invented the concept of the special relationship for reasons of political expediency, and was then the first of many prime ministers to find it didn’t exist.
Above all, it rested on a denial of the reality that the United States, like all great powers in history, will in the end follow its own interests and objectives, with no regard for the interests and objectives of its supposed friends, let alone those of its avowed enemies.
If the presidency of Donald J Trump teaches Britain that lesson at least, it will be a small benefit.