Donald Trump has tripled down on his ‘go back’ attack on progressive Democrat Congresswomen, telling a White House manufacturing event: “If you’re not happy in the US, if you’re complaining all the time, very simply, you can leave. You can leave right now.” It was typical Trump, refashioning the age-old racist trope of ‘send them back’ attacks that immigrant communities have long suffered.
Yesterday, Theresa May’s official spokesman said “the prime minister’s view is that the language used to refer to these women was completely unacceptable”. Last night, Boris Johnson said “you simply cannot use that kind of language..it’s totally unacceptable”, while Jeremy Hunt added that “I have three half Chinese children and they are British citizens born on the NHS and if anyone ever said to them go back to China I would be utterly appalled”.
Yet both Johnson and Hunt refused to call either Trump’s language or the President himself ‘racist’. The foreign secretary’s justification was that “it is not going to help the situation to use that kind of language about the president of the United States”. Asked why he would not condemn the comments as racist, Johnson replied: “You can take from what I’ve said what I think about president Trump’s words.” Contrast their reluctance with the forthright view of the only black Republican House member Will Hurd, who said last night: “I think those tweets are racist, and xenophobic”.
Can you say racist things and not be a racist? Well, yes, just as you can say anti-Semitic things and not necessarily be an anti-Semite. But it depends on how egregious the language is, how quickly and sincerely you apologise and whether it is part of a pattern of behaviour. In Trump’s case, there’s no doubt his words were racist (not ‘racially charged’, as some US media euphemistically put it). And to my mind there’s no doubt Trump himself is a racist, because he has form as long as your arm (Charlottesville, Birtherism, “look at my African American over here”).
Boris Johnson has long argued that he’s not a racist, even though he’s written racist things while describing them as ‘satire’. The Guardian today digs out an old article in which he said “Islam inherently inhibits the path to progress and freedom”. It also disinterred a piece in which he backed the idea of “keeping the Turks on the tram tracks to EU membership” - which is quite a contrast his Vote Leave campaign posters about 76 million Turks joining the EU, and his false allegation that Cameron’s “government wants to accelerate Turkish membership”.
As for US, Trump’s game is just as cynical as it is racist. It may be that his original remarks were aimed only at Ilhan Omar, the Somali-born Congresswoman, and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, but he didn’t mind widening it to include all four ‘socialist’ women Democrats. And his tweet overnight confirmed the real strategy of suggesting all Democrats shared their radical views: “The Dems were trying to distance themselves from the four ‘progressives’, but now they are forced to embrace them. That means they are endorsing Socialism, hate of Israel and the USA! Not good for the Democrats!”
The real cause of Trump’s latest tactics is probably the latest opinion NBC/WSJ poll showing that he would lose to Joe Biden by 9 points in a 2020 election, to Bernie Sanders by 7 points, to Elizabeth Warren by 5 points and to Kamala Harris by 1 point. Trump has already called it a ‘fake poll’, but sounds rattled. He seems to be banking on racism, plus fears of ‘socialism’, to win swing states, so this looks like only the start of a long, ugly road to next November.
The most important thing to come out of the Sun leadership hustings last night was that Johnson and Hunt both ditched the controversial Northern Ireland ‘backstop’ that has dogged the whole Brexit saga.
Johnson was particularly blunt. “No to time limits, or universal escape hatches, or all these kind of elaborate devices, glosses, codicils and so on that you could apply to the backstop. I think the problem is very fundamental.” That sounded straight out of the DUP’s playbook. He wasn’t asked about this rival idea of making the backstop redundant by extending the transition period, but that seems irrelevant now as he wants the whole thing excised from any deal.
Which of course is why fears of no-deal are suddenly stronger than ever. On one level, at least Johnson is being more honest in saying that a renegotiated version of May’s withdrawal agreement is impossible - the EU27 say they aren’t reopening it anyway. But on another level, it makes no-deal possibly the most likely outcome on October 31.
Johnson also ruled out a snap election or second referendum (“the people of this country are utterly fed up with politicians coming back to them offering referendums or elections”). Given that he will simply ignore any parliamentary move to ‘block’ no-deal (which may be too late to stop it and may not get enough support), he seems to be squeezing Remainer Tories to ally with Corbyn in a late October no-confidence vote that would trigger a general election.
It’s not impossible to imagine Johnson thinking of that as a winning strategy. With Labour still reeling from internal strife over both anti-Semitism and Brexit, some of his supporters think there’s no better time to hold a snap poll. His pitch could be: ‘look, folks, I didn’t want this general election, it’s been forced on me by Labour-supporting Remoaner Tories (deselect them by the way), but now we are having an election, I’ll bloody well win it to keep Corbyn out’.
Yesterday was a difficult day for Jeremy Corbyn, to put it mildly. He faced pressure from staff trade unions, former and current staffers, senior peers and the PLP, all urging him to get a grip of the anti-Semitism issue. I’ve done a full write-up HERE, including backbencher Siobhan McDonagh saying: “The Labour party, the party of the workers? This makes me sick”.
PLP chairman John Cryer takes seriously his role as mediator between MPs and the leadership so his fury was all the more striking as he condemned the way the party had questioned the credibility of those who took part in the Panorama programme. “To attack the whistleblowers was a gross misjudgement,” he said. “The bottom line is we have got racists in the Labour party and they are not being dealt with.”
Corbyn has called an emergency meeting of the shadow cabinet for next Monday and will address the PLP for his end-of-term address. Will he use the shad cab meeting to hammer out some new move that he can then arm himself with when he meets MPs that night? Or is this just all a delaying tactic to get to summer recess, with the justification that we should now let the Equalities and Human Rights Commission get on with its job (and its work could last many months)?
Watch Rod Liddle on Newsnight justify magazine columns carrying racist tropes because, well, ‘it’s comedy sometimes’. He was talking about his own articles, not those of Boris Johnson. I think.
Something else that came out of the Sun hustings was that May’s (actually David Cameron’s ) 100,000 net migration target is dead, with both Hunt and Johnson refusing to endorse it. Hunt committed to getting numbers ‘down’ but Johnson said: “I’m not going to get into some numbers game with you. We’ll have control. It’s what people voted for and it’s about time they got it.”
Young Tory think tank Onward called overnight for the net target to be dumped. But there is one last supporter: May herself. Asked yesterday if she now felt it was finally time to abandon the albatross, one senior source close to her said: “It would be a bit late to stop [supporting it] now!”.
It’s extraordinary just how many foodbanks are now in regular use across the UK. Today we have new figures showing that there was a 20% rise in demand for emergency food parcels for children last summer. Trussell Trust, the UK-wide foodbank network, is concerned the summer holidays this year will be even busier as overall demand continues to rise across the UK.
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