Why Britain loves to hate Donald Trump
The Parliament debate Monday on banning the Republican shows how he has touched a raw nerve.
By Robert Colville
Politico EU
January 18, 2016
LONDON — Of all the things that baffle the British about America, the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump has to be right up there with breakfast pizza and everyone always shooting each other.
I appreciate that many Americans are amazed — and appalled — by Trump’s ongoing popularity. Now try to imagine observing the whole thing without having experienced Trump the tycoon, or Trump the TV star. Because from here, it looks very much like the greatest nation on earth is in thrall to a racist demagogue with the least convincing head of hair since that of William Shatner.
The final straw, the moment that turned bafflement to fury, came with Trump’s call to keep Muslims out of the U.S. It wasn’t so much that people here thought it was racist, or idiotic (though they certainly did), it was that it expressed a view so extreme that it was completely beyond the pale: taking more than a billion people and tarring them as ISIL sympathizers. Even Nigel Faragethought The Donald had gone too far.
The resulting petition to ban Trump from the U.K. — now signed by more than 573,000 people — seemed to bubble up from the collective unconscious: “Well, if you Americans won’t do anything about this ghastly man, we bloody well will.”
The British have never had much time for Trump. His brand of boastful, gilt-edged vulgarity scrapes against our every aesthetic nerve.
Of course, both the petition and the subsequent parliamentary debate — set for Monday afternoon — are a grand exercise in what one British writer calls “virtue signaling.” Neither has anything resembling legislative force. There will be no back and forth on the famous green benches. The Queen will not be dispatching letters to Parliament, granting her royal assent to the Donald Trump (Get Out and Stay Out) Act 2016. There won’t even be a formal vote.
Instead, for three hours on Monday afternoon, MPs will be able to leave the House of Commons chamber — where they’re set to consider the Energy Bill — and wander down to Westminster Hall, the secondary chamber which is used to debate things that don’t actually matter. And there, they will be able to denounce Trump to their hearts’ content.
But as with Trump himself, even the most ludicrous example of gesture politics sometimes has to be taken seriously.
For one thing, this debate does have some domestic political significance. The British have never had much time for Trump. His brand of boastful, gilt-edged vulgarity scrapes against our every aesthetic nerve. And his endless protestations that his particular taste in oligarch chic is “classy” are about as convincing as those of Mama Morton and Velma Kelly in “Chicago.”
* * *
There is one significant exception. Years back, the new Scottish government in Edinburgh — perhaps out of sheer gratitude that someone was taking it seriously — made Trump (whose mother was born in the Hebrides) into a business ambassador.
Then, under Alex Salmond, the Scottish National Party administration did not merely bend the planning rules to allow Trump to build a vast golfing resort on environmentally protected land, they ripped them up completely. (It is striking that the anti-Trump petition was started by an activist in Aberdeen who had long objected to the way the tycoon ran roughshod over local sensibilities.) So close was the relationship that Salmond even appealed to Trump to soothe America’s feelings over Edinburgh’s decision to release Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, on medical grounds.
Salmond and Trump seemed like soulmates: gregarious, self-promoting egotists with a shared taste in self-aggrandizing portraiture.
So it came as something of a shock for the SNP to discover that their best friend was, in fact, a shameless bigot — especially since so much of their political identity revolves around feeling morally superior to the heartless right-wingers in London. Salmond’s successor, Nicola Sturgeon, has stripped Trump of his ambassadorship, and he has also lost an honorary degree from Stirling University. With Scottish elections due in May, expect the connection to be mentioned by the other parties a time or 20 on Monday.
Yet the Trump debate also highlights a wider difference between Britain and America, and it is not necessarily one that flatters our own country. In the U.S., there is outrage over Trump’s race-baiting — but a recognition that the First Amendment guarantees his right to engage in it.
In Britain, there is no such absolute commitment to freedom of speech: instead, the government has a positive duty to police and punish what is deemed to be “hate speech.” So the home secretary, Theresa May, does indeed have the power to bar Trump from entering the country if she decides that he is “fostering hatred which might lead to inter-community violence” — a criterion already used to deny entry to the shock-jock Michael Savage and Shirley Phelps-Roper of the Westboro Baptist Church. (Criminal convictions are also grounds for exclusion, which explains why Martha Stewart, Dog the Bounty Hunter and Chris Brown crop up on the list of excludees.)
The government’s official position (which I share) is that Trump’s views are both toxic and xenophobic — but that banning him from the country would be sinking to his level. Yet it is striking that the counter-petition expressing that position has been signed by less than a tenth of the numbers calling for The Donald to be muzzled.
“Coming to the U.K. is a privilege and we expect those who come here to respect our shared values” — British Home Office statement.
The Trump-haters do not just object to what he says. It almost feels as if some of them view his every speech as a micro-aggression: by calling on Theresa May to ban him, and whipping up popular and parliamentary sentiment to that end, they can make the country a “safe space” in which such views need never be heard.
It isn’t just Trump. As Charles Clarke, May’s predecessor, said in 2005, the power to deny people was traditionally used on “grounds of national security, public order or risk to the U.K.’s good relations with a third country.” The context for those comments was his decision, in the wake of the July 7, 2005, attacks in London, to widen the rules to cover “those who foment terrorism, or seek to provoke others to commit terrorist acts … for example, preaching, running websites or writing articles that are intended to foment or provoke terrorism.”
In the decade since, however, the criteria have broadened inexorably. The U.K. Border Agency or the home secretary can turn people away if they feel their “character, conduct or associations” are not “conducive to the public good.” Those criteria have been behind successful campaigns to keep out hate figures such as the “pick-up artist” Julien Blanc and the rapper Tyler, the Creator for writing homophobic lyrics years before. “Coming to the U.K. is a privilege,” said a pious statement from the Home Office, “and we expect those who come here to respect our shared values.”
Neither Blanc or Tyler is someone you’d want to sit next to at a dinner party. Nor is Trump, for that matter (you’d probably spend too long gazing at his hair). But it’s hard to argue that their presence in the country is going to foment anarchy.
And while keeping such people out may make us feel good about ourselves, it also allows us to pretend that there aren’t many more people inside the U.K. who share their views. After the call to ban Trump, the second most popular petition on the official site — signed by 456,458 people at the time of writing — calls on the government to ban not just Muslims, but everyone else, from entering the country until ISIL is defeated.
Perhaps that’s why respectable opinion here is really so upset about Trump. Not because no one here shares his views, but because too many people do.
LONDON — Of all the things that baffle the British about America, the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump has to be right up there with breakfast pizza and everyone always shooting each other.
I appreciate that many Americans are amazed — and appalled — by Trump’s ongoing popularity. Now try to imagine observing the whole thing without having experienced Trump the tycoon, or Trump the TV star. Because from here, it looks very much like the greatest nation on earth is in thrall to a racist demagogue with the least convincing head of hair since that of William Shatner.
The final straw, the moment that turned bafflement to fury, came with Trump’s call to keep Muslims out of the U.S. It wasn’t so much that people here thought it was racist, or idiotic (though they certainly did), it was that it expressed a view so extreme that it was completely beyond the pale: taking more than a billion people and tarring them as ISIL sympathizers. Even Nigel Faragethought The Donald had gone too far.
The resulting petition to ban Trump from the U.K. — now signed by more than 573,000 people — seemed to bubble up from the collective unconscious: “Well, if you Americans won’t do anything about this ghastly man, we bloody well will.”
The British have never had much time for Trump. His brand of boastful, gilt-edged vulgarity scrapes against our every aesthetic nerve.
Of course, both the petition and the subsequent parliamentary debate — set for Monday afternoon — are a grand exercise in what one British writer calls “virtue signaling.” Neither has anything resembling legislative force. There will be no back and forth on the famous green benches. The Queen will not be dispatching letters to Parliament, granting her royal assent to the Donald Trump (Get Out and Stay Out) Act 2016. There won’t even be a formal vote.
Instead, for three hours on Monday afternoon, MPs will be able to leave the House of Commons chamber — where they’re set to consider the Energy Bill — and wander down to Westminster Hall, the secondary chamber which is used to debate things that don’t actually matter. And there, they will be able to denounce Trump to their hearts’ content.
But as with Trump himself, even the most ludicrous example of gesture politics sometimes has to be taken seriously.
For one thing, this debate does have some domestic political significance. The British have never had much time for Trump. His brand of boastful, gilt-edged vulgarity scrapes against our every aesthetic nerve. And his endless protestations that his particular taste in oligarch chic is “classy” are about as convincing as those of Mama Morton and Velma Kelly in “Chicago.”
* * *
There is one significant exception. Years back, the new Scottish government in Edinburgh — perhaps out of sheer gratitude that someone was taking it seriously — made Trump (whose mother was born in the Hebrides) into a business ambassador.
Then, under Alex Salmond, the Scottish National Party administration did not merely bend the planning rules to allow Trump to build a vast golfing resort on environmentally protected land, they ripped them up completely. (It is striking that the anti-Trump petition was started by an activist in Aberdeen who had long objected to the way the tycoon ran roughshod over local sensibilities.) So close was the relationship that Salmond even appealed to Trump to soothe America’s feelings over Edinburgh’s decision to release Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, on medical grounds.
Salmond and Trump seemed like soulmates: gregarious, self-promoting egotists with a shared taste in self-aggrandizing portraiture.
So it came as something of a shock for the SNP to discover that their best friend was, in fact, a shameless bigot — especially since so much of their political identity revolves around feeling morally superior to the heartless right-wingers in London. Salmond’s successor, Nicola Sturgeon, has stripped Trump of his ambassadorship, and he has also lost an honorary degree from Stirling University. With Scottish elections due in May, expect the connection to be mentioned by the other parties a time or 20 on Monday.
Yet the Trump debate also highlights a wider difference between Britain and America, and it is not necessarily one that flatters our own country. In the U.S., there is outrage over Trump’s race-baiting — but a recognition that the First Amendment guarantees his right to engage in it.
In Britain, there is no such absolute commitment to freedom of speech: instead, the government has a positive duty to police and punish what is deemed to be “hate speech.” So the home secretary, Theresa May, does indeed have the power to bar Trump from entering the country if she decides that he is “fostering hatred which might lead to inter-community violence” — a criterion already used to deny entry to the shock-jock Michael Savage and Shirley Phelps-Roper of the Westboro Baptist Church. (Criminal convictions are also grounds for exclusion, which explains why Martha Stewart, Dog the Bounty Hunter and Chris Brown crop up on the list of excludees.)
The government’s official position (which I share) is that Trump’s views are both toxic and xenophobic — but that banning him from the country would be sinking to his level. Yet it is striking that the counter-petition expressing that position has been signed by less than a tenth of the numbers calling for The Donald to be muzzled.
“Coming to the U.K. is a privilege and we expect those who come here to respect our shared values” — British Home Office statement.
The Trump-haters do not just object to what he says. It almost feels as if some of them view his every speech as a micro-aggression: by calling on Theresa May to ban him, and whipping up popular and parliamentary sentiment to that end, they can make the country a “safe space” in which such views need never be heard.
It isn’t just Trump. As Charles Clarke, May’s predecessor, said in 2005, the power to deny people was traditionally used on “grounds of national security, public order or risk to the U.K.’s good relations with a third country.” The context for those comments was his decision, in the wake of the July 7, 2005, attacks in London, to widen the rules to cover “those who foment terrorism, or seek to provoke others to commit terrorist acts … for example, preaching, running websites or writing articles that are intended to foment or provoke terrorism.”
In the decade since, however, the criteria have broadened inexorably. The U.K. Border Agency or the home secretary can turn people away if they feel their “character, conduct or associations” are not “conducive to the public good.” Those criteria have been behind successful campaigns to keep out hate figures such as the “pick-up artist” Julien Blanc and the rapper Tyler, the Creator for writing homophobic lyrics years before. “Coming to the U.K. is a privilege,” said a pious statement from the Home Office, “and we expect those who come here to respect our shared values.”
Neither Blanc or Tyler is someone you’d want to sit next to at a dinner party. Nor is Trump, for that matter (you’d probably spend too long gazing at his hair). But it’s hard to argue that their presence in the country is going to foment anarchy.
And while keeping such people out may make us feel good about ourselves, it also allows us to pretend that there aren’t many more people inside the U.K. who share their views. After the call to ban Trump, the second most popular petition on the official site — signed by 456,458 people at the time of writing — calls on the government to ban not just Muslims, but everyone else, from entering the country until ISIL is defeated.
Perhaps that’s why respectable opinion here is really so upset about Trump. Not because no one here shares his views, but because too many people do.
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