Fall Out: A Year of Political Mayhem. Tim Shipman
Читать онлайн книгу.
of Trump’s, caused an outcry that left May looking flat-footed. At a joint press conference with Binali Yildirim, the Turkish prime minister, she refused three times to say what she thought about Trump’s decision until she was heckled by reporters shouting, ‘Answer the question.’ Even then she managed only, ‘The United States is responsible for the United States’ policy on refugees.’ Her desire to parade her new relationship with Trump, her own tough line on immigration and her disdain for dancing to the tune of twenty-four-hour news combined to create a public relations disaster.
It was left to Boris Johnson to sort out the mess and ensure British citizens were exempted from the ban. Downing Street arranged a conference call between May, Johnson and Amber Rudd, the home secretary. ‘Talk to your opposite numbers,’ she said. ‘We’ve got to try and fix this.’ Nick Timothy liaised with the foreign secretary, who spoke to Rex Tillerson, Trump’s secretary of state, and then the White House. A Downing Street aide said, ‘Boris ended up on the phone to Steve Miller and hammered out an agreement. Boris said, “Can I get that in writing?” Miller sat at his computer, Kushner banged it over to us. We checked it with Number 10. Katie Perrior ran it past Sean Spicer, who took it to the president. You might say it’s a bit strange that the British foreign secretary is on the phone to a White House staffer but this is an unusual administration.’
Unusual or not, the senior figures in the British government had now aligned themselves indelibly with the most controversial figure ever to occupy his office. It is hard to fault the desire to put Britain at the front of the queue to influence the new president and secure a post-Brexit trade deal, but in the coming months such eagerness began to look like an error.
The idea of a state visit by Trump attracted the threat of mass protests at home. On 6 February, the Speaker of the Commons, John Bercow, announced that he would be ‘strongly opposed’ to Trump giving an address in Parliament’s Westminster Hall, an honour accorded to Barack Obama but one that had not been offered to Trump.
In March a fresh row erupted when Sean Spicer, the president’s press secretary, repeated a claim made by an analyst on Fox News that GCHQ – the British intelligence listening station – had been used by the Obama administration to spy on Trump Tower. In a break from the tradition that the government does not comment on intelligence matters, GCHQ – with Boris Johnson’s backing – issued a furious response calling the allegations ‘nonsense – they are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored’. General H. R. McMaster, Trump’s national security adviser, contacted his opposite number Mark Lyall Grant to apologise and Spicer conveyed his regrets to Kim Darroch.
The following week, Johnson visited the White House to meet Reince Priebus, Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, and had McMaster over for dinner at Darroch’s residence. It was a trip that coincided with the Westminster terror attack, in which an Islamist mowed down pedestrians on Westminster bridge before stabbing a policeman to death. Miller told Johnson, ‘In twenty or thirty years’ time everyone’s going to look at Britain and think Brexit was the best thing you ever did.’
That spring, with the backlash against Trump’s continually erratic behaviour gathering pace in Britain, the president and May held another conversation in which Trump indicated he did not wish the state visit to go ahead if it meant he would face mass protests in The Mall. ‘I haven’t had great coverage out there lately, Theresa,’ he complained. May, perhaps with the sympathies of a fellow sufferer, replied, ‘Well, you know what the British press are like.’
Apparently hoping the prime minister could arrange better coverage, Trump said, ‘I still want to come, but I’m in no rush. So, if you can fix it for me, it would make things a lot easier. When I know I’m going to get a better reception, I’ll come and not before.’4
To those who listened in, Trump’s prickliness was not even the main feature of the call. More serious, to them, was the way he bamboozled May, throwing her off her talking points to the degree that she was unable to make the policy interventions civil servants had planned for her. ‘He’s totally disarming,’ a Downing Street aide said. ‘Normally when she goes into a meeting and she has two delivery points, she will deliver them. She’ll get a sheet saying, “You need to raise this issue. We want to move things in that direction. These are our two objectives for the call. You might also want to raise these points.” With Trump he’ll start with, “Theresa I love you, I’ve missed you.” She can’t speak to that. It’s not the way you are supposed to speak to each other in these telephone calls. Her deliverable gets totally shot out of the water and she just can’t grapple with it.’ The aide said May’s calls with Trump were ‘the only example I saw of her in work not delivering when she set out to deliver … It shows you something about his power. He’s a crazy person but there is a charisma and an effectiveness there. In speaking like that he prevents all sorts of conversations. He’s completely in control. It’s deeply worrying.’
By March, the prime minister had other problems. Having dealt with the international consequences of the world created by Brexit, May got back to work on the domestic issues. While she had been seeing Trump the Supreme Court had ruled on whether she could trigger Article 50 without parliamentary approval.
9
David Davis had thought they were going to lose from the start, but he still believed the government should fight the case. In mid-October 2016, two weeks before the High Court verdict against the government, the Brexit secretary sent the prime minister a letter outlining her options. He knew that Theresa May liked thinking over decisions, rather than having them sprung upon her. ‘I think we’re going to lose, whatever our lawyers say,’ he wrote. The plaintiffs, led by Gina Miller, wanted the court to rule that only Parliament, not the government, had the right to trigger Article 50. Davis outlined three options if the government lost: appeal the case; give MPs a vote; or appeal the decision while offering some concessions, like a debate or a white paper outlining the government’s Brexit plans.
Davis supported the third option. He believed it was desirable for the highest court in the land to rule on the constitutional principles involved to prevent further legal disputes that could disrupt Brexit later. ‘I want an authoritative outcome that cannot be challenged,’ he told colleagues. In an article for ConservativeHome, written in July before he got the job, Davis had recommended that the government publish a ‘pre-negotiation white paper’. But that was a card best kept in May’s back pocket until the Supreme Court had delivered its verdict.
Meanwhile, in preparation for the expected defeat, Davis took personal charge of drafting a bill, with just two clauses, to trigger Article 50. ‘David had a “clean bill strategy”,’ a DExEU source said. ‘He wanted it to be simple and do nothing else.’ That was the best hope of getting it on the statute book unamended. May agreed with her minister’s analysis and after the High Court verdict they engaged in two months of shadow boxing, knowing that they would have to make further concessions. Davis told MPs it would be inconceivable to deny MPs a vote on the final Brexit deal since the European Parliament would get one, but he gave no ground on who had the right to trigger Article 50. May remained equivocal even about that, refusing to commit to a vote in Parliament on the final deal when she appeared in front of the Commons liaison committee five days before Christmas.
After their defeat in the High Court, some in Downing Street could not understand why they struggled on. ‘I queried why we were continuing to fight the court case,’ one senior aide said. ‘It was clear we weren’t going to win it. Basically, politics dictated that we should and so we saw it through.’ May and her team concluded that the Eurosceptics would never forgive her if they were seen to give up.
The politics contributed to the government losing in court. Fear of the Eurosceptics prevented the attorney general, Jeremy Wright, and the government’s chief counsel, James Eadie QC, from making an argument that would have boosted their chances of success. At issue was the nature and effect of the 1972 European Communities Act, the legislation