The
early invitation by May for Trump to make a State Visit to the UK looked pretty
silly at the time. The more time passes,
the more reason he gives people for demanding that it be cancelled. If I thought that anything he said was
thought out before he pressed finger to keyboard, I’d almost be tempted to
suggest that it was entirely deliberate – he wants it to be cancelled. Not only would that spare him the prospect of
protests against his presence, it would also fuel his claim to be willing to
stand up for America in the light of all criticism.
It
seems unlikely that the invitation will actually be rescinded, though. It’s more likely to sit behind the clock on
the White House mantelpiece gathering dust in the vain hope that all concerned
will simply forget about it. The UK
Government responds to every call for the visit to be cancelled with a
resounding ‘no’. Whether the messages
being delivered privately by diplomats are any different is another question,
but I doubt it for two reasons. The
first is that if any different message had been passed on quietly, Trump would
surely have tweeted about it. He
struggles to keep quiet about anything, and certainly not any suggestion of a
slight to himself. And secondly, there
is the long history
of the UK according official state visits to a succession of tyrants, dictators,
and crooks.
There
are reasons aplenty to withdraw Trump’s invite; I don’t think I even need to
spell them out. But can it really be
said that he is a less worthy invitee than many of those already on the
list? Turning the issue into a question
of whether or not one person should come is to avoid the real underlying issue,
which is the willingness of the UK state to welcome all manner of undesirables
to these shores in the hope of economic advantage, lavishing them with honour
in the process. The best way to stop
Trump’s visit is to abolish the whole business of state visits, which are
anachronistic and irrelevant, a throwback to a Ruritanian past.
Economically
and politically, we have little choice but to deal with the world as it is, and
that sometimes means dealing with some very unpleasant people whose values few
of us share. But we don’t have to fete
them in the process.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment