Scott Morrison was overshadowed in Britain by Donald Trump. That is no criticism of our Prime Minister. Who in the world wouldn’t be overshadowed by Trump? Maybe the Queen, certainly no one else. For all that, Morrison was hot property in London. Everybody wanted to see him. Everybody loves a winner.
But Trump was the London superstar. The US President was on his best behaviour. Theresa May, beaten, battered and barely functioning, was a figure to excite pity even from Trump and he was as kind to her as a parent with a sick child.
Despite the oddities of his state visit, serious business was done. Trump is only the third US president to receive the honours of a full state visit. Trump responds well to flattery and he certainly did this time. He was charmed and impressed by the Queen.
It is worth pausing to note the incredible global triumph of the Queen. She is surely the most popular woman in the world. She is a magnificent silent rebuke to the age. She does not hector. She does not abuse. She makes no real gesture to the zeitgeist. She doesn’t do psychodrama and self-disclosure. Yet she is the most powerful element of Britain’s vast, accumulated soft power.
It is right for Britain to give Trump a state visit. It is not an honour for an individual but for the office of the presidency, an especially powerful symbol of continuity in a troubled time. The anti-Trump demonstrators covered themselves in ignominy. They are happy to welcome the President of the People’s Republic of China, Xi Jinping, but determined to mock and insult the US President.
Much that Trump has tweeted and said in the past has been vulgar and offensive. But I don’t see how you credibly criticise him for this by being more vulgar, offensive and extreme yourself.
The two most foolish Londoners this week were mayor Sadiq Khan and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Khan styles himself a moderate, sensible, social democratic politician and once had ambitions to lead the Labour Party. Yet a day before Trump arrived Khan wrote a newspaper opinion piece that denounced him as the moral equivalent of the fascist dictators of the 20th century.
This is, frankly, grotesque on Khan’s part. Those fascist dictators include Adolf Hitler, who murdered six million Jews, invaded and laid waste to his neighbours and waged a world war in which tens of millions were killed.
It is perfectly legitimate to criticise Trump for all manner of things, stylistic and substantial. It is not only functionally insane to equate him to fascist dictators, it is deeply corrosive of the fundamental decencies of political debate. Forget all these pious denunciations of populism from progressive politicians. When figures like Khan use such grotesquely exaggerated moral categories to denounce Trump, they are promoting extremism more effectively than anyone else.
Khan of course does not espouse violence against anyone. But far from being a voice of moderation, he cynically manipulates the emotional extremism of our demented moment in history. He got the reaction he wanted. Trump tweeted critically of Khan, calling him, among other things, a “stone cold loser”. This encouraged much of the British media to embark on a full-scale jihad denunciation of Trump. Mind you, the outrage seemed tired and stale this time. Corbyn railed against Trump for criticising Khan.
There is an element almost of class snobbery here. Trump speaks in colloquial terms, which innately sound rough, whereas Khan speaks in the mellifluous Davos man dialect which, though oleaginous, sounds superficially reasonable. But Khan’s remarks were significantly more extreme than Trump’s.
Corbyn’s performance was even worse than Khan’s. Corbyn decided he would address the street protest against Trump. He also boycotted the state banquet the Queen hosted.
Trump’s own later comments on Corbyn were, by Trump’s standards, mild, calling Corbyn ”somewhat negative”. Corbyn’s irresponsibility is profound. If Corbyn should become prime minister, he will be responsible for Britain’s national security. As Theresa May observed, and as anyone with an IQ above room temperature knows, no relationship is more important to British security than the US relationship. Whether a Trump administration would trust a Corbyn government enough to continue the intelligence-sharing relationship at the heart of the entire Five Eyes Western alliance would be a critical question for British security.
Corbyn did not lead a street protest against Xi, whose government has put a million Muslim Uighurs in centres human rights activists describe as concentration camps. And he has a long history of supporting dictators such as Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez.
The only moment I felt a speck of sympathy for Corbyn was when Trump revealed that Corbyn had asked for a private meeting and Trump turned him down.
The biggest issue of substance was the US asking Britain not to allow Chinese telco Huawei to participate in its 5G network. Numerous Conservative leadership contenders have come out in favour of excluding Huawei. May’s preference, according to leaks, was to allow Huawei into the periphery of the network but not its core.
In his press conference with May, Trump said he was sure the Huawei issue would not be a problem. He didn’t force the Brits to capitulate in public but it looks as though they are moving towards the US and Australian position.
Former foreign secretary William Hague, who was in government when Britain was co-operating with Huawei to make sure its equipment was secure for British use, argued in a powerful newspaper column that the Chinese government, the technical issues and the strategic environment had all changed and Britain should now keep Huawei out of its 5G network altogether.
If Trump’s visit achieved that policy change, it was a singular success.
The visit was originally conceived as coming after Britain had left the EU and would be on the lookout for new trade deals. Trump, enticingly, offers Britain a “phenomenal” trade deal if it ever does clear itself of the EU.
But that is all speculative. May formally resigns the prime ministership tomorrow. Everything then depends on the next Conservative prime minister, most likely Trump’s friend, Boris Johnson, who talked with Trump over the phone but otherwise sensibly kept a low profile.
This week, Johnson was the most level-headed British leader of the lot. Apart from the Queen, of course.
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