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Times of London
Tories’ flirting with Trump will end in tears Many on the right are drawn to the new president’s populist agenda but fail to see how little he cares about Britain The Americans have elected a turkey as their president. He looks like a turkey, walks like a turkey, gobbles like a turkey — he is a turkey. There is nothing in Donald Trump’s record, in the appointments he has made or in his disgusting inaugural speech yesterday that prompts second thoughts. The new president is no evil genius, he’s just tiresome, rude and silly: one of those vexatious, loud and unpleasant people we do best to avoid. Except we can’t. But we should not over-analyse or over-hype his prowess. I decline to big him up in the way the liberal left are doing. A rather small person has made it to the highest office, as regularly happens in American (and British) history, and he will either crash and burn, or the Washington political establishment will move to contain him and limit the damage. There is plenty of wisdom in America and a deep respect for due process. So we should relax a little. The chorus of horror from the British and European intelligentsia is getting boring. I was at a press awards breakfast in London not long ago when the synchronised squealing all but had me scattering the croissants and shouting “Viva Donald!” And that’s enough about Mr Trump, to whom Destiny has given much rope. He’ll duly hang himself. The focus of my worry is different. Among some quite intelligent British Conservatives — and more widely on the intellectual right — there is now the distinct stirring of a Tories-for-Trump movement. The flirtation is getting noisy and the spectacle unwholesome. The affair, if it develops, would be very much against the national interest — and incidentally a moral and intellectual disgrace for British conservatism. But romance is definitely in the air. My friend Michael Gove chose his words carefully in his sensational Times interview with Donald Trump this week, but I choked on his assessment of the new president’s intellect. “Intelligence takes many forms,” he wrote. Wise counsel indeed, Michael, but Trump isn’t one of them. “Why Donald Trump looks like just the friend Britain needs,” writes Freddy Gray in this week’s Spectator, the right-of-centre magazine for which I also write. Iain Duncan Smith has opined that Donald Trump’s presidency is a “real opportunity” for the UK to “reinvigorate” its relationship with the United States. Another former cabinet minister, Owen Paterson, rejoiced that, because Trump “supports an independent UK”, this “puts us ahead of the game”. John Redwood was “impressed” by Trump’s economic policies. Charles Moore a former editor of The Telegraph and a civilised and fastidious man — but now “more interested than horrified by the victory of Donald Trump” — takes Trump’s side in the row over whether he did or didn’t intend to mock a person with a withered arm. Meanwhile Jacob Rees-Mogg, MP, reminded us yesterday that “Trump is sympathetic to the UK. He talks about how much his mother loved the Queen.” Mr Rees-Mogg suggests there’s a fellow feeling because Trump too has scored “a victory of the people over the establishment”. I’m still struggling with the distinction between Jacob Rees-Mogg and the establishment.
You might expect the Conservative Party and Tory newspapers to be
horrified by this foul-mouthed slob with his crude opinions. We used
to expel such types from our national membership. So why the
dalliance? The outstanding and obvious reason is Brexit. Its
sponsors are anxious about their project and looking for allies.
This has led them into idolising a protectionist US president as
part of their quest to turn Britain into a global free trade nation.
Their reasoning is not wholly unrealistic: a hoped-for free trade
agreement with the US would be a big boost to our push for new
markets. Third, there’s a visceral Tory hatred not of elites, but of “liberal” elites. I sense it in myself. For Tories, however, and ever since mobs overturned toffs’ carriages, this rage at metropolitan bien pensants has been complicated by a conflicting fear of the crowd — fear, really, of the people. Now, all at once, Trumpist populism promises to welcome us into the bosom of the mob. We can feast with panthers! Down with the kids, we can be rich yet spit at the rich! We can know what the common people know. I sensed the frisson that Enoch Powell felt: a dry classicist of ambivalent sexuality, carried on the shoulders of cheering London dockers. In short, Trumpism and anti-European populism are doing wonders for the tortured psyche of the Conservative right. |