When the Queen makes any reference to politics in her speeches, it is always carefully calibrated, impeccably diplomatic and borne of 67 years of experience on the Throne. And her message to Donald Trump at the State Banquet last night felt very much like a warning that he should not tear up long-standing multi-lateral bodies such as the United Nations, Nato and even the World Trade Organisation.
After the Second World War, the US and UK built “an assembly of international institutions, to ensure the horrors of conflict would never be repeated”, she said. “While the world has changed, we are forever mindful of the original purpose of these structures: nations working together to safeguard a hard-won peace.” It sounded for all the world like Her Majesty speaking truth to power.
The difficulty with Trump is that subtlety doesn’t work - and the ‘truth’ is a highly elastic concept in his hands. So, will Theresa May (another woman with only nominal power) today deliver a more robust message that ‘America First’ is putting at risk both old alliances and new opportunities? May is lamer than any lame duck president, with just days left as Tory leader and mere weeks as PM. Yet should could provide an example to at least some of the contenders to replace her if she speaks up for wider liberal values today.
May could set out both in her ‘bilateral’ (in fact a meeting with others in the room like Jeremy Hunt) and in her press conference later the need to act cooperatively on climate change, on Iran and on China. The 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre gives both the president and the PM a chance to say how much China has changed, and not changed, since then. And on Huawei, she could ram home more forcefully than ever that the firm will be nowhere near the secure channels used to share intelligence between the UK and US.
Will she even dare make the bigger point that economic engagement with China, as long as it complies with international norms of rules-based behaviour, is the surest way to prevent conflict over the long term? And that Trump risks abandoning the US’s global leadership role on things like climate change and global free trade, as he himself rips up the world’s rules-based order? Don’t hold your breath, but it could offer an opening for any Tory leadership hopeful who wants to tell it how it is.
So far, no meeting with Boris Johnson has yet been slotted into Trump’s diary (nor with Nigel Farage), but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Before he took off from the US, the president said: “I may meet with them, they wanna meet, let’s see what happens.” With the president looking for a new diplomatic dance partner, Johnson’s hard Brexit beat is obviously more attractive than May’s. Trump’s tweet last night about freeing the UK from the ‘shackles’ of the EU could have been written by Boris.
The new slimline tonic of Johnson’s upbeat leadership campaign was unveiled yesterday with footage of him meeting punters on the doorstep in Peterborough and - very significantly - him repeating he would take Britain out of the EU by October 31 ‘with or without a deal’. Some of the silent majority of the Tory parliamentary party fear that this talk could prove Johnson’s big strategic error, especially when it comes to the reality of having to ask for an extension from Brussels.
Speaking of which, Gary Gibbon last night reported that June 2020 was now the new date being floated within the EU (Macron aside) and over here. One can imagine a Gove and a Hunt premiership reluctantly going along with another extension, but for Johnson it would trigger a fresh ‘betrayal’ narrative. Tonight, he can expect to be probed on this at the One Nation Caucus hustings, where Sajid Javid, Andrea Leadsom and Kit Malthouse are due to also appear.
And no-deal bravado is often just that. In his interview with the Sunday Times, Trump said: “If you don’t get the deal you want If you don’t get a fair deal then you walk away.” But everyone seems to have forgotten what he actually said on this subject at his press conference with May in Chequers. Back then, I remember Trump was asked by the Mail’s Jason Groves if May should walk away from the talks with Brussels. His answer? “No. Well, you can’t walk away. Because if she walks away, that means she’s — she’s stuck. You can’t walk away.”
Still, Boris is motoring ahead among Tory MPs. As I reported last night, his campaign has a detailed individual headcount for every colleague and I’m told that he is on course to get more than double the amount of Gove and Raab (his nearest Brexiteer rivals). He has more than 40 public endorsements and has at least as many private pledges, which will be rolled out in coming days. One ally even says he’s ‘closing in’ on the magic 105 MPs needed to guarantee - even in the first round - a place on the final ballot. The juggernaut is rolling, can anyone stop it?
When it comes to that ‘speaking truth to power’ thing, Noam Chomsky once said this: “power knows the truth already, and is busy concealing it”. His line is firmly that it is the oppressed who need to hear the truth, not the oppressors. And as a fan of Chomsky, Jeremy Corbyn is taking that approach today as he attends and speaks at the Parliament Square protest against Trump’s visit.
Trump yesterday gifted Sadiq Khan a re-election boost for next year’s Mayoral contest. And the Labour leader’s dream outcome today will surely be any flak from the President during the press conference. The long-running feud between Trump and Khan is one thing, but just imagine if it were repeated between Trump and Corbyn - especially if Corbyn becomes PM.
On the Today programme, Emily Thornberry was at pains to say Labour would ‘do business’ with Trump, while also making clear where it disagreed with him. “He is caging small Mexican children, he has grabbed women and boasted about it, he is a sexual predator, he is a racist. When is it our country got so scared?…Actually he admires strength.”
Still, Corbyn managed to attend the state banquet for Xi Jinping in 2015, while boycotting last night’s with Trump. Thornberry insisted Corbyn had raised human rights and other issues with the Chinese ‘in the meetings around that’ and the Chinese had respected him for it. But you can bet the Conservatives will be making the contrast clear in any election campaign.
Watch this naked Scouser celebrate Liverpool’s open-top bus ride with an open-top salute all of his own to mark their Champions’ League victory.
Thornberry was also asked about her Euro election night cry of pain and her demand for urgent action to clarify the message on a second referendum. She conceded that Corbyn was right to say that “may be a long way off”. adding that “we have got to get through another election campaign for the Tories, so yes it seems to be a long way off”. That points to late July before Labour would say anything new on this vexed issue.
Lord Sugar has laid into George Galloway after the ex-MP appeared on ITV’s Good Morning Britain to defend his controversial tweet about Israeli flags that saw him sacked from his job at TalkRadio on Tuesday. “He’s taking a load of garbage as usual. I walked with 15,000 Tottenham fans and the Liverpool fans …I did not see, and I have never seen, an Israeli flag flown. He’s a bloody liar. A total liar.”
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