Front Bench: Donald Trump has eviscerated Theresa May's Brexit plans, but will it make any difference in Parliament?
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Front Bench
Before you read on, draw up a mental list of everything you could imagine Theresa May wouldn’t want Donald Trump to say during his visit to the UK. Well, he’s said all of it.
– He said what?! –
In all, Trump said: May’s Chequers deal rules out a trade relationship with the US; the plan isn’t what the people voted for; she ignored his advice on negotiating Brexit; Boris Johnson would make a good prime minister.
On top of that: asked about the Novichok attack, he answered that “getting along” with Russia and China was a good thing; on defence, he claimed Britain, too, had to spend more.
Hitting every base then, I’d say.
In fairness, he did at least deny reports that he finds May boring and school-teacherish, calling them “fake news” and saying that he thinks “she is a nice person.” At least that’s a win.
– Not the pudding I ordered –
Trump was talking to The Sun in an exclusive interview on Wednesday at the US embassy in Brussels – he hadn’t even made it to the UK before lobbing grenades.
The New York Times reportsthat Downing Street knew of the interview, but believed both that it was positive and wouldn’t break until Friday morning. Instead, the interview went live while May and Trump were at a major dinner with business leaders in Blenheim Palace, before the PM was about to deliver her speech.
Today only gets worse for the PM. Having backed her after the Chequers deal was announced at the end of last week, the Daily Mail and Sun have attacked her Brexit White Paper (which was published yesterday). Oh, and she has to spend her afternoon at Chequers with the man who has just eviscerated her premiership in the press.
The intervention really is extraordinary. Although the President’s team insist he didn’t mean to undermine May, he laid into the delicate Brexit compromise she’s spent a year building towards and bigged up her greatest internal enemy in Boris. Rumours are swirling, although denied by Tom Newton-Dunn who conducted the interview, that some Brexiteers had been whispering poison into the President’s ears.
– Pawns in a wider game –
While the President’s comments were explosive, it’s hard not to read them without getting the impression that he sees Britain as just a pawn in his own broader culture war. The interview was wide-ranging, but Trump always brought it back to one subject: immigration.
Britain leaving the EU is a good thing, because it means we’re doing something about all those immigrants coming in and changing our culture. As Trump sees it: “Allowing the immigration to take place in Europe is a big shame. I think it has changed the fabric of Europe and unless you act very quickly, it’s never going to be what it was and I don’t mean that in a positive way.”
It’s also worth noting that, according to American figures (but not UK ones), the US has a trade surplus with Britain – that, as much as anything, makes us good trade partners in Trump’s eyes.
Indeed, the President seems to have a natural talent, conscious or unconscious, for honing in on topics likely to delight and enrage in equal measure.
On being given an England football shirt he proclaimed: “You don’t hear the word England as much as you should … I think England is a beautiful name”. For a man so fond of his Scottish heritage, he doesn’t seem very aware of Celtic sensibilities.
– What’ll the impact be? –
First things first. The British people don’t like Trump. That’s not metropolitan myopia or bias – a new poll by YouGov shows that 77 per cent of Britons have an unfavourable view of him (that’s two points behind Vladimir Putin, full results below).
Despite the impression given by culture warriors, you can be a Brexiteer and not be a Trumpite.
And as the American President himself referred to in the interview, his predecessor told Britons what to think on Europe and it didn’t work – and Barack Obama was a lot more popular in Britain than Trump.
However, like him or not, the President is right to say that May’s Brexit proposals will kill any hope of a UK-US deal (even if he is wrong that it will “end a major trade relationship with the United States). He is shining a powerful spotlight on that in a way only he can.
– Entrenched, not swayed –
Most importantly, this will turbocharge Brexiteer rebels in Parliament, who saw a US trade deal as totemic, and make them all the more enthusiastic in their guerrilla warfare.
Yet the Parliamentary and Tory party arithmetic hasn’t been changed by Trump. May would probably still win any leadership challenge, and Parliament definitely won’t vote for a hard Brexit. The crunch point remains the meaningful vote on the deal in the Autumn.
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