Donald Trump heads to Portsmouth for the most solemn part of his UK State Visit, to commemorate the fallen American and British troops who took part in D-Day. Yet even on a day like today, his attention is also elsewhere, and he’s finding time to effectively interfere in the Tory leadership contest by meeting two key contenders (Jeremy Hunt and Michael Gove).
Trump has always had a wandering eye and the race to succeed Theresa May is no exception. As I write HERE, yesterday was marked by the President effectively looking over the PM’s shoulder to see which candidate he liked best. After the forced marriage of this odd couple back two years ago in Washington, and their Relate-style counselling session at Chequers last year, the press conference at the FCO felt like a polite divorce proceeding, with Trump’s mind already on his next partner.
I was struck by the fact that the President spent literally two minutes alone with May yesterday and that was to chit chat pleasantries as they strolled from No.10 to their press conference. He spent 31 more minutes in a one-on-one with Piers Morgan. But most revealing of all was that he gave a personal audience (minus any aides) to Nigel Farage and then backbench Brexiteers Iain Duncan Smith and Owen Paterson at the US ambassador’s residence later. Dominic Raab, Sajid Javid and Matt Hancock were left looking as redundant as May herself.
So it was perhaps no surprise that Hancock and Raab let rip when Trump walked straight into the NHS-is-on-the-table trap laid for him by the Times’ Francis Elliott yesterday. The health secretary tweeted “not on my watch”, while Raab added “the NHS is not for sale to any country and never would be if I was Prime Minister.”
In true Trumpian fashion, he tried to row back on his remarks in the Piers Morgan interview. Yet even his denial was a classic bit of confused verbiage. “I said everything is up for negotiation because everything is [ie the NHS]. But I don’t see that being ― that’s something that I would not consider part of trade [ie not the NHS].” As with his flat-out lies about ‘thousands’ of wellwishers, and not seeing or hearing protestors, the truth was an alien concept.
Perhaps the most shocking thing about today’s commemoration is the way in which the UK government has had to tie Trump to a new ‘D-Day proclamation’. The 16 countries who have signed up “commit to work constructively as friends and allies to find common ground where we have differences of opinion and to work together to resolve international tensions peacefully”. The very fact that it’s seen as a means of binding the US to a rules-based world, says it all.
Michael Gove’s wife Sarah Vine reveals in the Mail today what it was really like to attend the State Banquet at Buckingham Palace on Monday night. It’s packed with detail, including the decision to flatter Trump by getting the band to play Carly Simon’s Bond tune ‘Nobody Does It Better’. If only they’d played another Simon classic about a man with a roving eye: You’re So Vain.
I’m told Trump actually phoned Boris Johnson not yesterday but on Monday night to see if he fancied a meet-up. The former foreign secretary explained he had the One Nation Caucus hustings to attend instead, but that didn’t prevent him from chinwagging for 20 minutes about Brexit and all the other things a PM-in-waiting cares about.
And up on the Commons Committee corridor last night, Johnson was the star attraction as he told a packed room of 80 MPs why he was the only candidate to save the Tories from the ‘extinction’ they face if they fail to win voters from Farage and Corbyn. The push for ‘moderate’ backers continues in the Times as three junior ministers (Rishi Sunak, Robert Jenrick and Oliver Dowden) come out for Boris today.
Meanwhile, the momentum heads Johnson’s way in the new rules for the leadership race agreed by the backbench 1922 Committee. James Cleverly and Kit Malthouse (both former aides to Boris, so if they back someone else that’ll be a story) dropped out yesterday, so we have 11 left. Yet under new rules, contenders need at least eight MPs to stand, 16 backing them for first round, then 32 for second round. It will speed up the contest and make life easier for the front-runners.
Andrea Leadsom, who may actually not make the first round, last night revealed when she was leader she consulted Commons clerks about whether parliament could be prorogued to prevent MPs voting down no-deal Brexit. She was told by those clerks that would not be possible. As for Johnson, he’s trying to revive the Brady amendment, itself seen as a unicorn by many in the EU. Hancock has a big speech on foreign policy this morning, declaring ‘we must beat Huawei with a British champion’. Hunt has launched his new website, stressing his business credentials.
Amid the political chaos caused by Trump and the Tory leadership race, the spectacular collapse yesterday of Change UK, or rather its splitting, was quite something. Just four months after the party was founded, it looks like a splinter of a splinter. Among those to quit were interim leader Heidi Allen and party spokesperson Chuka Umunna.
They were joined by Luciana Berger, Sarah Wollaston, Gavin Shuker and Angela Smith. Those who remain in CHUK feel privately that the defectors’s defectors are being wooed by the Lib Dems. And the former Labour MPs like Chris Leslie simply think that allying with the Lib Dems opens a possible deal with Corbyn, the man they loathe so much they quit their party to prove it.
Watch Spurs fan and former minister Tracey Crouch burn Arsenal-loving Speaker Bercow in the only interesting moment in the chamber yesterday.
Emily Thornberry deputises for Jeremy Corbyn against David Lidington at PMQs today (the main players are in Portsmouth). She seemed to back off her views on clarity on a second referendum yesterday, but the issue isn’t going away. London Mayor Sadiq Khan took time out from the Trump row to tell HuffPost that Labour has to deal with this matter urgently - and well before its annual conference.
The Brexit Party is convinced it is on course for its first ever MP in the Peterborough by-election tomorrow. We have a dispatch from the contest’s front line today. Despite predictions from both bookies and polling companies, Labour, the Conservatives, and, to a lesser extent, the Lib Dems have thrown the kitchen sink at the seat. Given Boris’s leadership video was all about him getting switchers on the doorstep in the town, let’s see if his magic has worked.
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