I GET ON WELL WITH TRUMP, INSISTS MAY
THERESA May defended Donald Trump last night and said she ‘gets on’ with the US President.
The Prime Minister said she and Mr Trump ‘work very well together’ and insisted that his state visit to the UK will go ahead, claiming the delay was not because of opposition but an issue of ‘dates’ and ‘logistics’. During an interview with ABC News, Mrs May said: ‘I think the point about the special relationship between the UK and the US is that when we do disagree we’re able to say so. And pretty bluntly. For example, on the Paris Climate Change Agreement, I’ve made very clear I was dismayed when America decided to pull out of that. ’
DONALD Trump is a ‘bully, misogynist and a racist’ and should not be offered a state visit to Britain, the deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats said yesterday.
Jo Swinson warned of the return of the ‘politics of the bully’, saying ‘Faragey, Trumpy angry... shouty, slogans aren’t a solution to anything’.
Addressing the Lib Dem conference, Miss Swinson, MP for East Dunbartonshire, outlined a bold new approach to tackling populist politics, including a fresh vote on Brexit.
She called the US President a product of ‘anti-liberal forces’, adding: ‘He boasts about sexually assaulting women.
‘He cruelly mocked a reporter for his disability. He has rolled back trans rights. And for someone who makes much of being straight-talking, he won’t call a Nazi a Nazi.
‘Yet the Conservative Government thinks it is right to offer Trump the honour of a state visit to the UK. They are wrong. It is a sign of our weakness in a Brexit world.
‘How easily will our values be cast aside in our desperation to sign trade deals to avoid economic catastrophe.’
At the party’s conference in Bournemouth, Miss Swinson said global politics seems broken ‘when calm heads and brave leaders are needed more than ever’. She added: ‘A few years ago it would have seemed inconceivable that in such a crisis China would be a voice of reason, and Russia more measured than America.
‘The politics of the bully is back. Human rights are trampled. Climate change is denied. Hate and division are spread like poison into society.’
The Lib Dem deputy leader pointed to situations in North Korea, Turkey and Burma as evidence of global instability.
She also highlighted the regime in Venezuela, saying it ‘beggars belief that Jeremy Corbyn would rather defend a tenuous link to socialism than condemn these atrocities’.
Miss Swinson added: ‘We are absolutely right to fight for an exit from Brexit. Brexit will make it harder to follow our values, to protect human rights, to tackle climate change, to solve global problems.
‘An exit from Brexit is necessary but not sufficient because this culture clash continues and the populists stoke this tension. They do it deliberately. They talk in simple soundbites that scapegoat different groups. It’s all someone else’s fault.
‘As liberals we know this is nonsense. The Faragey, Trumpy, angry... shouty, slogans aren’t a solution to anything.
‘But we do need to offer our own alternative solutions. We need to be much more radical, both in what we propose and in how we craft it.’
Meanwhile the Lib Dems backed calls for a plastic bottle deposit scheme in England and Wales. UK ministers are under increasing pressure to curb the plastic menace after Holyrood announced a deposit scheme following a Scottish Daily Mail campaign.
Tory Environment Secretary Michael Gove has suggested that Westminster could adopt the ‘great idea’.
It has gathered support from all parties, but now the Lib Dems have publicly backed the scheme, which operates in several countries.
The UK currently recycles only 57 per cent of the millions of bottles sold each day. The rest end up in landfill or as litter, polluting beaches and green areas.
A recent YouGov survey found that 73 per cent of people support or strongly support the idea of deposits on bottles and drink cans.
‘They talk in simple soundbites’