David Gauke is a former Justice Secretary, and was an independent candidate in South-West Hertfordshire at the 2019 general election.
Where should British centre-right politicians stand on the issue of Donald Trump? Predictably enough, it has become something of an issue in recent weeks as Trump sews up the Republican Party nomination.
Liz Truss implicitly backed Trump last year. Jacob Rees Mogg told Sky that he believed that it was in the UK’s interests for Trump to return “because Donald Trump is better disposed to the United Kingdom”. Boris Johnson wrote in the Daily Mail that a Trump presidency “could just be what the world needs” and David Frost expressed his admiration for his leadership qualities (“some people, like Trump, have it and some people don’t” – who, I wonder, does he have in mind?).
There is, of course, a perfectly defensible position for a British politician, when asked about an election in another country, to refuse to be drawn. This is a matter for the people of (in this case) the US and not for me, they might say. For a politician in high office, or aspiring to high office, they might add that their job was to make the relationship work in the interests of the UK. Particularly for the most senior politicians, such evasiveness is not only defensible it is also wise.
Not everyone needs or wants to plead that defence. The US Presidential election matters to the UK; there are big principles and issues at stake. People are going to have opinions and are entitled to express. But supporting Trump? Really?
The case for Trump from a British perspective, such as it is, requires us to put aside Trump’s personal obnoxiousness, incompetence and insurrectionary behaviour and focuses on his policies and attitude to the UK in comparison to his opponent, Joe Biden. Paul Goodman elegantly made this point on ConservativeHome last week, acknowledging that there is a “straightforward case for believing that Trump’s cynical assault on the integrity of the 2020 election … is so heinous an offence that he must be punished for it by the country’s voters this year” but that there is also a case for a “cold, hard take at the national interest” where the situation is more complex. So let us start there.
Biden is aged and gets confused, it has to be acknowledged, although much the same can be said about many of Trump’s recent public appearances. But Biden is anti-British, say his British critics, citing his performative Irishness. Yes, it can grate at times but what often lies behind these concerns is a degree of neediness about the special relationship.
Whether there is a Winston Churchill bust in the West Wing is not that important. Biden evidently thinks Brexit was a bad idea, and that we should adhere to the terms of the Good Friday Agreement but that does not make him hostile to the UK. In fact, that makes him very strongly aligned to British public opinion.
It is true to say that Biden is something of a protectionist and the withdrawal from Afghanistan was unseemly and the UK government was not treated collegiately. But if we are judging candidates on their commitment to free trade and consideration of allies, Trump is – to put it mildly – not your man.
Much more importantly, Biden is committed to NATO and supportive of Ukraine. He could be more supportive, but he is certainly more so than Trump. Trump’s supporters have blocked aid to Ukraine; Trump himself speaks warmly of Putin, and promises that he will bring the war to an end even before he is inaugurated. Not surely in a manner that would be to Ukraine’s advantage.
As for NATO, we should not kid ourselves that all Trump’s complaints about the institution have been with the legitimate intention of increasing military contributions from other members. The entire concept of NATO – that an attack on one is an attack on all and that members have to respond accordingly – offends every America First instinct of Trump. No one would believe that a Trump-led US would intervene to protect the Baltic States if an emboldened Russia invaded. More to the point, Putin would not believe it.
If you are an Atlanticist, a supporter of NATO, an ally of Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression, it would be truly extraordinary to support Trump over Biden. Volodymyr Zelenskyy is not the first person to be let down by Boris Johnson.
This matters more than Biden family’s ancestral grudge over the Potato Famine or Trump’s affection for the Royal Family. When it comes to our own defence, Trump is a grave risk.
That is the big issue of national interest. But we should not, however, ignore the principled and straightforward case for opposing Trump. Trump is an enemy of democratic institutions and the rule of law. He lost an election, refused to accept that he lost and sought to incite a mob to overturn it. He still refuses to accept that he lost in 2020, and if he loses in 2024 he will refuse to accept that too. And if he wins, there is no particular reason to think he will go quietly when his term expires in 2029, regardless of what the US constitution says.
He openly threatens to use all the powers of President to pursue his enemies. He dismisses any criminal investigation into him as being politically motivated and, in the event of being convicted, will dismiss the US justice system as being corrupt and in need of dismantling.
He is not, and I find it odd that it is necessary to say this, someone who a respectable politician could possibly support. There is much to be said about his general behaviour (a court concluded that he is a rapist, for goodness sake) but his response to his 2020 election defeat, especially on 6 January 2021, should be enough to disqualify him from support.
Some of my former colleagues are obviously unpersuaded, so let me try two further arguments. First, Trump is very unpopular with the British public. Not just the left, either; even those who voted Conservative in 2019 favour Biden over Trump by 41 per cent to 28 per cent (or 59-41 if you take out the “don’t knows”). This issue is not the Conservatives biggest problem, but supporting Trump plays into the perception that the Tories are extreme and out-of-touch.
Second, the political debate in the UK will be changed fundamentally by a Trump re-election. For a start, the case for much closer military and foreign policy co-operation with the EU would become much stronger. Talk of the UK participating in a European army always sounded preposterous to all but the most enthusiastic federalist up until now. The return of Trump makes it a policy we may need to consider.
Some Tories, of course, see Trump as providing a role model for how the Conservative Party needs to change. If November sees Rishi Sunak lose and Trump win, the case will be made that we need to emulate the latters’s appeal to ordinary people, how we need to wage the culture wars, tell it how it is and embrace a combination of authoritarianism and the Trumpian, autarkic version of capitalism. Embracing Trump is embracing a new, successful future for the right, it will be argued.
Conservative politicians – and indeed, the Conservative Party – can go down that route. But on any relevant measure – in terms of national interests, electoral advantage, or the defence of democratic institutions – it would be a profound mistake. Trump is beyond the pale.