Theresa May is tied by Brexit on speaking out
CHUCK Schumer put it well when he said, after President Trump’s lightning ban on immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries and complete suspension of the acceptance of refugees: “Tears are running down the cheeks of the Statue of Liberty tonight.” Here is a country that has, through history, welcomed the tired, the poor, the huddled masses. Now, at a stroke, the huddled masses can go to hell. In Donald Trump’s latest executive order, we come up, quite unusually, against something of such seriousness that it demands that any person of conscience should speak clearly against it.
Instead, Theresa May fudged, dodged the question, and only when her feet were held to the fire (ie, it emerged that Sir Mo Farah will be on the list of undesirables) did she allow a feeble statement of disapproval to be issued on her behalf. That — after the wince-making spectacle of her holding hands with the US President, after that coquettish remark about “opposites attracting” — shames her office.
You can see, of course, why Mrs May is terrified to rebuke Trump. She’s headed, whether she likes it or not, for the hardest of Brexits. The European powers aren’t likely to be throwing the UK’s economy a lifeline any time soon, and so she’s hoping Uncle Sam will somehow pull our fat from the fire. In a normal situation, realpolitik would demand that she keep close to Trump. But this is not a normal situation. This is an international emergency. And there’s not the slightest reason to suppose that, flatter him as we may, Trump can in any way be counted a reliable ally.
Donald Trump has not once given any indication that he is morally, intellectu- ally or temperamentally adequate to the job of running a provincial golf club, let alone the free world. And we’ve laughed about him, and laughed at him — and certain people in my trade, affecting a shallowly contrarian dandyism, have praised him. But now the joke is over.
His latest executive order violates the constitutional rights of many of his own citizens and residents, and it violates America’s legal commitments to the international community. The US is a signatory to the Geneva Refugee Convention. A ban on refugees violates that convention (as, while we’re at it, Mr Trump’s enthusiasm for torture and desire to “take the oil” from Iraq violates other conventions). So the new executive order is not only morally repugnant, it is outright illegal.
And even when a New York judge said so from the bench — ruling the deportation of those held in US airports to their countries of origin as unconstitutional — it’s reported that his judgment has been defied or ignored by homeland security personnel. The American Civil Liberties Union says at least one person was repatriated after the ruling was made. We have an American government, in other words, that — forget checks and balances — outright defies the law of the land. And that slobby shock-jock Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist, if reports are to be believed, intervened personally to extend the ban to green card holders, ie legal residents of the US.
This cannot stand. And our government, if is to have a shred of moral authority, can and must be among the loudest voices saying so.
THE death of the former Spectator and Oldie editor Alexander Chancellor leaves us all impoverished. Alexander was the most gracious and kindly of men, as well as a wise and witty writer.
When I went to live in New York, where he had worked for a while on The New Yorker, he was more generous with introductions than anyone. “Any friend of Alexander’s is a friend of mine,” was how one contact he passed on put it.
His especial gift was his sense of fun. He had a laugh, as a colleague put it, like a duck being tickled. It was often deployed. And though, as the creator of the modern Spectator, he was entitled to reverence as an elder statesman of journalism, he never invited it. He saw the ridiculousness of everyone, and himself, and joyed in it. A model of how to write, and of how to live.