I WAS fair enjoying our wonderful sunny Bank Holiday Monday ... then I turned on the evening news and allowed bungling Boris to darken my mood.
Watching Boris Johnson suggest that Trump was worthy of receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in North Korea has got to be one of the more humiliating gaffes, even for our disaster-prone Foreign Secretary’s repertoire.
Before this statement, he had appeared as a guest on the right-wing Fox and Friends TV programme, the president’s favourite news source, to appeal to Trump’s better nature on the nuclear deal with Iran. He will have to find it first!
So much for our special relationship. If this is the best way for the British Foreign Secretary to communicate with Trump, through the medium of trashy television rather than across a mahogany table in the White House, then we sure are all in a whole heap of trouble.
And if the British Foreign Secretary thinks that the president is worthy of a peace prize, then I think we can take it for granted that Boris and his Brexit chums are bricking it about gaining any kind of supportive trade deal from the US of A and are willing to say just about anything in order to get back on Trump’s Christmas card list.
It may be that Johnson is coming at this from the best of intentions, hoping genuinely to save the international agreement that Trump himself has described as “disastrous and insane” in order to pre-empt a dangerous nuclear arms race in the Middle East.
That was certainly his angle when he wrote his article for the New York Times on the matter, another attempt to get his message into the White House and another attempt to stroke Trump’s ego. But the closest he’ll actually get to the Big Man is when he meets with Vice-President Mike Pence this week as well as the national security advisor, the notorious John Bolton – the man who is egging on the president’s hard line of attack on Iran.
By the time this column has gone to press, we’ll know what Trump has to say on the Iran deal, if he’s paid any attention to our Foreign Secretary’s pleas, or indeed if the world has become an even more dangerous place. If Johnson has managed to persuade the president to take a more measured approach, then he will return triumphant to London, applauded by fans for his cunning, if novel, diplomatic communication style; but what if Trump holds firm and re-imposes sanctions on Iran, and then the deal collapses? Whither Boris in the winds that will blow then?
Maybe on his return to the UK, he can swap notes with his arch nemesis, Michael Gove, on how to curry favour with the Donald. Remember that nauseating exchange with Trump back when he was first elected? Gove, basking in the glory of securing the first interview with Trump since he was elected (if you ignore Farage’s gold elevator snap), fawning over the president and desperate for some confirmation that the UK was still “at the top of the queue”.
It was a masterclass in ‘sooking up’. Trump lapped it all up but gave no assurances, allegedly all taking place under the watchful eyes of Rupert Murdoch, lurking out of sight of the cameras.
Johnson as Foreign Secretary has none of the same access that Gove enjoyed as a back bencher. The problem for him is that Donald Trump bears grudges. While he may not have any understanding of how to conduct diplomatic relations, he’s the elephant that never forgets and he’ll have Johnson’s card marked for his negative comments when he was Major of London on not wanting to wander about New York least he was mistaken for the then presidential candidate. Trump may have an ego as big as the Empire State Building but Johnson has a mouth like Grangemouth.
The other problem for Johnson is that Trump really doesn’t care what Britain thinks, and his strapline, “America First” couldn’t be clearer. It’s been 18 months since he became president and in that whole time he’s done nothing to reassure the UK on support in their post-Brexit universe.
IT’S less of a special relationship and more of a dysfunctional one. The UK Government is the needy one, doing whatever it takes to get some attention, while the White House runs roughshod over their feelings. Johnson should have taken some notes on Emmanuel Macron’s visit – the French president clearly wants to build bridges with the new America but he’s nobody’s fool, blatantly pointing out Washington’s failures in his speech to Congress while cuddling in to his new pen pal. The result? France has replaced the UK as America’s number one European ami.
If the headlines yesterday on Theresa May’s customs partnership proposals are anything to go by, it looks like the humiliation of his US trip has taken its toll on Johnson. After a dark night of the soul, wrestling his demons and frustrations over being shut out of not just the Oval Office but No 10 too, he woke the next morning to vent his anger back home, pressing speed dial to the Daily Mail and taking a pop at May over her wishy-washy customs union solution. If Boris wants to be Prime Minister, go for the Max-Fac option and enact a hard and painful Brexit, he’s going to need all the friends he can get.
But isolation from your own continent looks a lot less splendid when your big pal across the ocean has other fish to fry and other countries to confront.
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