“How will you tackle another Trump Presidency if it happens?”
The Guardian’s political team put this question to the Foreign Secretary in October 2023.
They were sat in the standard pre-agreed interview meeting that media request with Cabinet Ministers at party Conferences, when you are in power. It’s less formal than a straight up interview but anything said is still on the record.
There were a lot of things Sir James Cleverly could not have known at the time of asking: that in a month he would not be Foreign Secretary, that Suella Braverman would have another chapter for her slow-at-best selling book by being sacked again, that there would be an early election within seven months, and all of them would be out and it would be a Labour Government that would have to deal with any second coming of Trump.
Technically we didn’t even know Trump would be running, as he didn’t become the Republican nominee until the March of 2024, but that was a ‘priced in’ assumption for almost everybody.
Then again nobody knew someone would try to shoot him before he could become President again.
Either way the answer was easy – some of the other questions they asked were harder and much more tuned to the febrile domestic politics of the time – and it involved a thought through response – after all for the last year and almost immediately on my arrival in government we’d had close dealings with the Biden administration’s Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken.
Blinken’s team had always been easy to get on and work with, but before anyone thinks it’s a political choice, it isn’t, which is what made this question for Cleverly an easy one:
“Well first it’s up to the American people not the British Foreign Secretary who they choose as President, and we deal with whoever they elect, in a professional way with our closest ally but what suits best British interests within that relationship. Were it to be Trump, at least we have warning of one thing, and can prepare for it; his unpredictability is now the most predictable thing about him”
We knew the media, and especially the Guardian, would have loved an unguarded swipe at Trump, not least because we, and they, knew that in Britain Trump has never been very popular, and there was, if you weren’t the Foreign Secretary, a certain advantage to avoiding full throated endorsement of the man.
Today that advantage is to be had by describing, as former Conservative leader and Foreign Secretary William Hague on Times Radio has, as “the worst President of my lifetime”
Of course there have always been Brits who have been MAGA adjacent Trump cheerleaders, from his first Presidency. Nigel Farage, was often in the States over the past years, referring to ‘The Donald’ as a personal friend and appearing at Trump rallies to endorse him, campaign for him, and as it happens learn the media playbook from his team.
Before anyone jumps that’s not a criticism it’s a fact. However it is a fact that doesn’t serve him nearly as well as it once did.
The fact is Trump has spent his second Presidency resetting almost everything America stood for in terms of relations with the rest of the world and especially Europe, and it has had consequences.
First there are some things that make sense from a US point of view and that even pre-date Trump. It is actually extraordinary that America having fought alongside us into the heart of Nazi Germany in 1945, was still prime guardian of European defence and security into the 21st century.
At every NATO summit I ever attended the contribution of member states was an issue. Even Biden, or rather his team – it was actually astonishing how much Biden’s own personal frailty was visible close up even in 2022 – was keen to push European states to commit more funding to their own defence.
Trump’s view has always been what I always struggled with some in the Foreign Office about, that your prime objective, over-riding all others, is what is in the nation’s best interests, whatever the international norms (one reason we did not do a deal with Mauritius over the Chagos islands). He’s right about that.
The problem now is Trump has taken it a step further and looked to what is in his own best interests. Being President is about him, more than America, and getting rich (richer) is also in play. Politicians getting rich out of a leadership role is something the British public have historically been deeply wary of, for nearly a thousand years!
The key example is Ukraine.
I have long disliked and been suspicious of Vladimir Putin. You can read why here. But please lets remind ourselves in the haze of war in Sudan, the Middle East, and Iran that Vladimir Putin invaded a neighbouring country, with no pretext, slaughtered civilians in Bucha and elsewhere, and started the first land war in Europe since WW2. He’s taken over a million casualties, and they keep dying.
Putin should be shunned for just his actions in murdering or attempting to murder opponents in the UK, and in Russia, but certainly for just the first six months of his war, alone. And the quality of mercy is not something that has come to him since, as a mother and kids were killed in a Russian missile attack just days ago.
Nothing has changed the facts that Russia is the aggressor, NATO expansion was no excuse, and he has butchered Ukrainians and Russians alike in a ghastly enterprise for his own aggrandisement that he thought would be over in a week.
Trump thought he could stop the war in days. Putin could have stopped it years ago.
Trump’s actually struggled with it for two years. He blames President Zelensky but like his expedition in Iran – that’s off target. By stopping the war he means giving Putin what he sought. Ukraine will not accept that not while they have sticks and rocks and have run out of ammunition. That was very clear to me when I held the Russia policy brief in FCDO. Nor should they have to accept it.
I have seen the receipts and if scarved protestors want Netanyahu tried as a war criminal then they can form a queue while Putin’s mob is dealt with. The world thought in the late 1990’s Milosevic, and Mladic would never face justice – but you just never know.
Trump is facing potential loss of majorities in both houses in the mid-terms, and diesel prices have caused him great unpopularity in America. His response is straight out of his personal playbook and the proof of what I’ve been saying.
He cuts a deal with Putin on diesel to try and reduce costs at the American pumps, and to shield the real cause of the problem, his failure to ‘crush’ Iran and have shipping flow through the strait of Hormuz. He needs people to be angry with Ukraine, back his overtures to Putin, and avoid mentioning the now widely termed “Operation Epic Failure”.
If you wanted evidence, Secretary of Defence, Pete Hegseth, fresh from insulting UK and other allies’ contributions in blood and material in Afghanistan faced a congressional grilling this week. He was targeted repeatedly over his claims that Iran was smashed and their military destroyed, when months on that is clearly nonsense.
Iran took a hell of a beating but isn’t, in fact, beaten. That’s the problem when one side merely needs to survive to claim a victory.
Any lefties reading, don’t even try the “but Badenoch wanted a war”, it’s Starmerite phooey. She said our ally – and America still is whatever Trump may do – should be able to use our bases, and 48 hours later the UK Government agreed.
The UK/US relationship will outlast Trump; it just won’t be ‘special’ – if it ever was quite as special as some made out.
However, support for Ukraine remains high in the UK, and so it should. Is the Ukrainian system squeaky clean? Of course not, its marginally less corrupt than Putin’s own massive kleptocracy but by surviving the might of the Russians for a year let alone four they have claimed a moral victory.
They still need us and European nations to make it a real one, one that will come from negotiation not on the battle field, but is equitable to the victims of an invasion by a corrupt and dangerous dictator.
Britain should do so not just morally but for security reasons. Putin is a threat to European security and ours. We are warned of our unreadiness in the event of a war with Russia, well wake up folks, I’ve seen the inside, we’re already in one. It may not involve tanks or drone attacks on a shattered pockmarked front line but it’s there – even if like Putin it’s disguised with words like “Special Military Operation” instead of ‘war’.
Trump has abandoned Ukraine in order to try and claw back some electoral traction, which I suspect he won’t get (even MAGA cultists are disappointed in him). He’s stuffed many an economy with his failure to prosecute properly another war he was over confident would be over in days not months.
Donald Trump is not our friend, and can’t be President after this term is up. Even some in his party are frustrated by his mercurial self-interested outbursts. If you are still thinking he’s some master tactician, much like some thought Putin was, I have news. He’s not. Neither are. They are just playing hardball in every damaging and dangerous way possible.
To say so is not woke, or wet or old world consensus, it’s just the truth. Just not seen on ‘truth social.’
If you don’t like it, I can’t say I care. As the Americans say, “suck it up”.