Uk politics

Visiting Northern Ireland last autumn, I met a very prosperous man who enthused to me about the Renewable Heat Incentive in the province. It paid him to install wood-pellet boilers and heat his rural business. After the political scandal broke, I understood why he was so happy. The RHI, as managed in Northern Ireland, had no upper limit, so there was no cheating involved in getting as many non-domestic boilers as you could manage. If you installed the boiler you got paid £1.60 for every £1 of pellets you burned, without limit. I gather there was particularly massive take-up by members of the Democratic Unionist Party, and their Free Presbyterian churches glow red day and night in consequence.

Well, Theresa May managed to lay on the praise towards Trump without seeming too sycophantic, which made their press conference a reasonable success. May congratulated Trump on his 'stunning' electoral victory while describing Britain's future as 'open to the world'. May seems to be presenting herself as a reassuring 'third way' leader between the frightening wildness of Trumpism and the suffocating multilateralism of the EU. It is silly to call her Thatcher to his Reagan only a few days into the Trump presidency, but certainly today could mark the beginning of a very important 'renewed' Special Relationship.

Theresa May mentioned Donald Trump only once in her speech to the Republicans gathered in Philadelphia tonight, but its centrepiece was a gift to him. In his inauguration speech, he said that the US was now out of the business of liberal interventionism. She told Republicans that the same applies to Britain. Here’s the key quote:- It is in our interests – those of Britain and America together – to stand strong together to defend our values, our interests and the very ideas in which we believe.  This cannot mean a return to the failed policies of the past. The days of Britain and America intervening in sovereign countries in an attempt to remake the world in our own image are over.

Just a year ago, the phrase ‘Brexit rebels’ denoted Tory MPs like Peter Bone who had a distinguished pedigree of pushing the government to be as Eurosceptic as possible, with the odd eccentric comment along the way. Today, it means former Cabinet ministers such as Nicky Morgan, who are trying to push the government away from a ‘Hard Brexit’ - also with the odd eccentric comment about trousers. Those new Brexit rebels are now demanding that the government publish a White Paper on Brexit. Morgan, Dominic Grieve and Anna Soubry want the government to ‘formalise the government strategy in a “reasoned fashion”’, as Grieve put it. This really isn’t the most difficult demand that the government has faced on Brexit.

The angrier, snootier sections of the Remain camp have done many bad things since 23 June. Some have suggested Brexit should be overthrown. Others have issued terrible libels against Leave voters, branding them ‘low information’ and xenophobic. Witness Nick Clegg in this Guardian video published this week having a good old laugh at Sheffield people who voted for Brexit after apparently falling for the ‘emotionally pungent’ claims of Leave leaders. But worst of all has been their sly rewriting of history. They’re engaged in a campaign to misremember the referendum, to depict it as a time of lies and idiocy, of racism unleashed.

The earliest members of Alcoholics Anonymous offered their famous Twelve Steps, which the drunkard must take in order to recover, born of their own experience. The Twelve Steps are still the foundation of AA. They work because they are taken by people who have hit rock bottom and realise it. The first step says, ‘We admitted we were powerless over alcohol — that our lives had become unmanageable.’ Theresa May’s Twelve Objectives, announced in her outstanding speech at Lancaster House of Tuesday, play a similar role for national recovery, substituting the words ‘European Union’ for ‘alcohol’. Until the June referendum, Mrs May, like millions of others, barely even admitted there was a problem.

Kipling wrote about Brexit first, you know: "It is always a temptation for a rich and lazy nation, To puff and look important and to say: Though we know we should defeat you, We have not the time to meet you. We will therefore pay you cash to go away." That, in essence, was David Cameron's approach to the eurosceptics within his own party. Promise to pay just enough to keep them satisfied in the hope they would not then be emboldened to come back for more. But, as Kipling knew: "And that is called paying the Dane-geld; But we've proved it again and again, That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld You never get rid of the Dane." Theresa May, to give her credit, has solved this problem. She has decided that if you can't beat them you might as well join them.

So, 'global Britain' eh? This, we are told, will be the leitmotif for Theresa May's Brexit speech tomorrow and, indeed, for her approach to international affairs more generally. And who could disagree with any of that? The argument will, of course, be couched in economic terms. The spirit of Britannia will be unleashed to sail the world's oceans. Britain is back, you know. We shall show the doubters what we're made of and by jove we'll make a success of Brexit. Well, let us hope so. There are many kinds of internationalism, however, and I'm not sure - at least not sure yet - the buccaneers really appreciate, far less admire, all of them. I always thought David Cameron's aspiration to spend 0.7 per cent of GDP on foreign aid a noble ambition.