Us politics

John Bercow has taken a lot of flak for his comments about Donald Trump. The Speaker has been accused of being an embarrassment to Parliament for saying Trump wouldn't be welcome to address MPs during a state visit. But amidst all the fury, Bercow’s pre-emptive ban does touch on a deeper question about the muddled thinking in British foreign policy. Several autocrats, many with poor human rights records, have addressed both Houses of Parliament: Emperor Hailie Selassie of Ethopia in 1954, Nikolai Bulganin of the Soviet Union in 1956, and his successor Alexei Kosygn in 1967, have all done so. And during Bercow's time as Speaker, the Emir of Kuwait and President Xi Jinping of China, have also spoken in Parliament.

John Bercow has just declared that he will oppose an invitation for Donald Trump to speak in either Westminster Hall or the Royal Gallery when, or should that be if, the US President comes on a state visit to Britain. The Speaker of the House of Commons’ opposition makes it extremely difficult for any invitation to be offered for Trump to address both Houses.  Bercow’s argument is not simply that Trump hasn’t been president long enough to merit the honour, but that the Commons’ opposition to, to use his own words, ‘racism and sexism’ mean that such an invitation would be inappropriate.

The bicoastal elite might be more effective in opposing Mr Trump if it weren’t obsessed with the persecution of anybody who says the wrong thing. ‘While you self-involved fools were policing the language at the Kids’ Choice Awards,’ raged the broadcaster Bill Maher last week, ‘a madman talked his way into the White House.’ This new puritanism must explain why some feminists make common cause with Islam. One of the Women’s March organisers was Linda Sarsour, a defender of sharia law, which is misogynism incarnate.

You know what the world needs right now? More seriousness, that's what. Within that, we desperately need more serious commentary. These are serious times and they demand stout-hearted, truth-telling, serious people. The kinds of people who will speak truth unto power while assaulting a series of diminutive straw men. Serious types who stroke their serious chins with their seriously perfectly-formed serious fingers. There are rituals that must of course be observed. You must, if you wish to be serious about these matters, admit that Donald J Trump is a sub-optimal, even deplorable, president. You certainly do not hold a candle for him. Nor do you hold anything else. No fawning admirer you. No sirree. But, being gimlet-eyed, you can identify the real issue here. Trump might be vulgar.

Among Donald Trump’s many neologisms is the 'What the hell is going on' evidentiary standard. It was introduced by Trump during his presidential campaign as his biggest dare yet: 'a complete and total shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on'. A high hurdle to clear, no doubt, and a controversial idea. Whether it would ever be implemented was unknown—after Trump’s election the Muslim ban was scrubbed from his website, then restored, with a spokesman blaming a technical glitch. Now we have our answers. Fleshed into public policy, figuring out 'what the hell is going on' means the government reviewing the security of America’s immigration system.

I am no fan of Donald Trump, but I can stand far enough back from his presidency to see that many of his critics are inadvertently already doing his re-election campaign for him. Today, Starbucks has reacted to Trump’s US travel ban on citizens of seven Middle Eastern and African countries by defiantly saying that it will go out and hire 10,000 refugees. Can the coffee chain not see that this is exactly the sort of thing which attracts America’s white poor to Donald Trump: the suspicion that they are being overlooked in favour of cheap labour from abroad? In Starbucks’ case it isn’t just a suspicion – it has effectively confirmed that it wants to discriminate against American workers.