PETER OBORNE
DONALD TRUMP has been a godsend to the Left, considering its historic hatred of America. With his exhibitionist wealth, vulgarity, misogyny and racist views, he personifies what they see as the country’s worst values.
Now, his decision to pull out of his expected visit to Britain has given Labour a reason to celebrate.
Not just because their bogeyman won’t defile this country’s streets, but because the issue has brought together the two sides of the Labour Party who have been waging a vicious civil war ever since Jeremy Corbyn became leader in 2015.
Yesterday, after the Mail’s Jack Doyle revealed Trump’s decision, a truce occurred between the rival Blairites and Corbynistas.
For, between them, they claimed credit for having led vociferous opposition to his planned ‘working visit’, which reportedly led Trump to be concerned that demonstrations might be disruptive.
At first sight, it is easy to sympathise with Labour’s exultation.
Trump is a narcissistic and absurd figure. He is a racist, who retweeted videos posted by Britain First, a fascist organisation that all decent people condemn.
This week, he allegedly described immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador and Africa as coming from ‘s***hole countries’ — an utterly unacceptable comment from anyone, let alone the President of the United States of America.
Yet I believe that Labour’s hysterical opposition to Trump’s visit here is equally contemptible.
CRUCIALLY, Trump is head of state of the most powerful nation in the world, which also happens to be our closest and most valued ally. Last summer, France’s President Emmanuel Macron hosted Trump. For all his liberal credentials, Macron recognised that this was in the French national interest.
For their part, the notoriously volatile French people understood this and the visit passed with virtually no trouble at all.
The truth is that Labour’s hostility to Trump is hypocritical.
Over the years — including under Labour governments — far worse monsters have been given the redcarpet treatment.
For example, in 1973, President Mobutu of Zaire, a homicidal dictator who embezzled up to £12 billion; in 1978, Romania’s Communist head of state Nicolae Ceausescu, who was later executed by a firing squad following protests about his brutal regime; and, in 1994, the abominable president Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. Two years ago, it was the turn of President Xi Jinping of China — the ruler of a one-party state where dissidents are jailed, torture is normal and citizens are spied on.
Compared with Xi Jinping, Trump is a hand-wringing liberal.
Yet when the Chinese leader came to London, there were no mass street protests and Jeremy Corbyn wore white tie and tails to attend a state banquet in his honour at Buckingham Palace.
The Labour leader said he would raise human rights issues in private. Why couldn’t he have tried to make a similar arrangement with Trump?
The fact is that realpolitik dictates that Britain needs a warm relationship with China. British jobs depend on it.
In a few months’ time, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman will visit Britain. However appalling Trump’s behaviour, it pales into insignificance compared with that of the architect of the Saudis’ attack on the Yemen which has claimed more than 10,000 lives and led to mass starvation.
But, yet again, I recognise that British jobs depend on good relations with Saudi Arabia and understand why the Crown Prince should come to this country as an honoured guest.
There was also the visit two years ago of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He had lunch with the Queen and a warm meeting with then PM David Cameron. And yet Modi had blood on his hands for having failed to stop anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat in which at least 1,000 people died.
Again, his state visit was justified because Britain needs strong trading relations with India, which is expected soon to overtake Britain and France to become the world’s fifth-largest economy. Of all people, London’s Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan, a Muslim, should have opposed Modi’s visit to Britain on account of his role in the Gujarat riots.
Yet Khan said he was against a ban — and himself visited Modi’s India last year.
Typical of Labour’s double standards, Khan revelled yesterday in the news of Trump’s cancelled visit.
A persistent critic of Trump, he first crossed swords with him last year after the London Bridge terrorist attack when the U.S. president mocked Khan’ s comments that there was ‘no reason to be alarmed’ by armed police on the streets. Khan hit back by calling Trump ‘ill-informed’.
WALLOWING in smug selfcongratulation, Khan said yesterday that Trump’s ‘policies and actions are the polar opposite of our city’s values of inclusion, diversity and tolerance’.
Also guilty of self- satisfied sanctimony is failed ex-Labour leader Ed Miliband.
Two years ago, he welcomed Modi’s visit. ‘I care very much about my relationship with India and my relationship with Prime Minister Modi, so I absolutely think that [Mr Modi’s visit] is a policy priority for me,’ he said beforehand.
Yesterday, he grandstanded his opposition to Trump. Retweeting Trump’s explanation that his cancellation was because he disapproved of the bad commercial deal behind the new U. S. embassy in London, Miliband taunted: ‘ Nope it’s because nobody wanted you to come. And you got the message.’
What these Labour pygmies don’t seem to realise is that Britain’s relationship with America helps bring jobs, prosperity and security to this country.
This is especially true of London — Sadiq Khan’s fiefdom. The City’s remarkable recent prosperity, in particular, is largely down to the presence of major American financial institutions.
Khan’s attacks on Trump are a classic example of virtue signalling. They ingratiate him to the Left and help burnish his credentials for a possible future bid to become Labour leader.
But, like his fellow Labour Trump-haters, he’s showing contempt for those Britons whose livelihoods depend on a healthy economy and whose safety depends on shared intelligencegathering with the Pentagon.