THE POMP ... AND THE PYGMY
In Windsor the US President meets the Queen. In London Corbyn’s rent-a-Lefties shame Britain
IN an extraordinary day of contrasts, Donald Trump saw the best and worst of Britain yesterday.
Theresa May and the Queen gave the US President the full red-carpet treatment. But his visit was soured by angry protesters.
Mr Trump and wife Melania were treated to a display by the Coldstream Guards at Windsor Castle before taking tea with the Queen.
Meanwhile, 25 miles away, Jeremy Corbyn led a rag- tag band of Left- wingers and others protesting against President Trump’s politics.
Addressing a crowd put at more than 100,000 in
Trafalgar Square, the Labour leader accused Mr Trump of ‘misogyny, racism and hate’. London’s Labour mayor Sadiq Khan licensed the use of an offensive 20ft blimp depicting the President as an angry baby.
The threat of protests meant Mr Trump missed out on visits to Downing Street and Buckingham Palace. Yesterday he acknowledged he had been made to feel unwelcome – and suggested he might never visit London again.
Tory MP Andrew Bridgen said Mr Corbyn’s conduct showed he was not fit for high office: ‘This is Jeremy Corbyn in his comfort zone, but the reason he’s free to protest is in part due to the fact our liberty and freedom has been underwritten by US military might for the last 70 years as part of Nato, which Mr Corbyn wants to leave.
‘Donald Trump is the leader of the free world and it is right that we accord him an appropriate welcome. He won’t lose a moment’s sleep because Jeremy Corbyn is a political pygmy by comparison, and a red one at that.’ The protests came as: Mr Trump revealed he had apologised to Mrs May after criticising her Brexit strategy in a bombshell newspaper interview;
The Prime Minister and President held a colourful 50minute press conference at Chequers, where Mr Trump declared the relationship between the two countries to be at ‘ the highest level of special’;
Mr Trump dangled the prospect of a post-Brexit trade deal that could ‘quadruple’ the UK’s £100billion annual trade with the US, provided we make a clean break with Brussels;
Mrs Trump played bowls with Mrs May’s husband Philip as the pair met Chelsea Pensioners.
Mr Trump became embroiled in a row with reporters after claiming that reports he had criticised Mrs May were ‘fake news’.
Yesterday’s protests were designed to show America’s head of state he is not welcome by some in the UK. Former Labour leader Ed Miliband, who attended the march, said: ‘Our quarrel is not with the American people, our quarrel is with the American President and his values – his racism, his misogyny, his embrace of dictatorships.’
Former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg said he was joining the march because of Mr Trump’s ‘crazed attacks on the EU and Nato’. Others who had pledged to attend included Bianca Jagger and Left-wing pop star Lilly Allen.
Mr Corbyn, who has met former IRA terrorists, said he was demonstrating because: ‘I wish to live in a world of peace, not of war.’
The Labour leader hailed the ‘ wonderful gathering’, which required a huge police presence, and said: ‘Our diversity is a message of solidarity.’
Further demonstrations against Mr Trump’s visit were taking place last night in Glasgow as he travelled to Scotland for a two- day stay at his golf resort at Turnberry in Ayrshire.
Speaking at Chequers yesterday, Mr Trump acknowledged his views were controversial, including that immigration is ‘changing the culture and is very negative for Europe’. He said: ‘It’s not politically correct... but I’ll say it and say it loud.’
SAY what you like about Donald Trump – and an awful lot of bile is poured on his head – he has a near genius for pointing out the emperor wears no clothes. Yes, the President has many faults. He is brash, vain and often undiplomatic. In his early-hours tweets, he can be boastful and boorish, while his ‘locker-room’ attitude to women verges on the Neanderthal.
But is he really the devil incarnate, as he’s depicted by the bleating sheep of the liberal Left?
For naked-emperor spotting, take this tumultuous week, when the ‘great disrupter’ charged like a bull in a china shop through a Nato summit in Brussels and on to Britain. Here he gave an incendiary interview to a red-top and told some home truths in an extraordinary press conference with Theresa May.
Anyone following the BBC’s sneering reports might think he was guilty of a massive diplomatic howler in Brussels, when he lambasted Germany for buying billions of euros worth of Russian gas while relying on the US for defence against Russian attack.
But look at it from US taxpayers’ point of view. Why should they go on picking up the lion’s share of Nato’s bills, while Germany – with its mighty economy – fails miserably to pay its share?
It’s the same with the Left’s attacks on Mr Trump’s trade war against China and his imposition of tariffs on some imports from the EU. Why should America tolerate the dumping of Chinese steel at below cost price – or the EU’s many barriers to US exports?
Indeed, for decades, the Brussels cartel has been conducting a trade war against the entire world – forcing EU citizens to pay well over the odds for food and goods, while hammering Third World farmers. You never hear the Left complaining about that.
Which brings us to Mr Trump’s supposed gaffes in Britain. True, a more discreet president might have held back from praising Boris Johnson (‘a very talented guy’, who would make a ‘great prime minister’) after he resigned in protest against Mrs May’s Brexit proposals. Nor was it tactful of him to attack London Mayor Sadiq Khan for doing a ‘very bad job’ of tackling terrorism and crime.
Most controversially of all – though he later rowed back unconvincingly – Mr Trump condemned the Brexit White Paper, saying it would probably kill off any Anglo-American trade deal.
Were these really gaffes? Or was the President, with his fresh businessman’s eyes, simply telling the blindingly obvious truth? It is a fact that Mr Johnson is very talented, while nobody can dispute that Mr Khan is doing a truly terrible job of fighting crime.
As for this week’s dismal White Paper, the world can see it represents a rotten deal for Britain and our hopes of striking trade pacts outside the EU.
Indeed, the deeper we delve into these 98 pages of impenetrable bureaucratese, drafted by defeatists in the Civil Service, the more evident it becomes that this compromise will leave the UK in the worst of all worlds, bound by EU rules but without any say.
Yesterday that pusillanimous Remoaner, Chancellor Philip Hammond, even made clear that he’s willing to make Britain’s finance industry subject to EU regulations. As the world’s second largest exporter of financial services, why on Earth should we have to take orders from the pygmies of Brussels?
As for the charge that Mr Trump has no business commenting on our domestic affairs, this paper does not recall the BBC attacking Barack Obama for throwing his weight behind Remain.
Meanwhile, those who accuse him of rudeness should consider the abominable discourtesy of those – including Jeremy Corbyn, Nick Clegg, Ed Miliband and Tony Blair’s liar-in-chief Alastair Campbell – who joined yesterday’s infantile protests against the President’s visit, keeping him away from London. Hasn’t it occurred to them they’d have no freedom to protest if America hadn’t rescued us from Nazism?
Yes, this paper has reservations about Mr Trump – though we wish our own politicians would speak up for British interests with half as much vigour as he does for America’s. But like the overwhelming majority in this courteous country, we welcome him wholeheartedly as the representative of our most powerful friend, in war and peace.