Labour MPs have been busy this week. No, not running the country – but voicing their opposition to Donald Trump’s state visit. Diane Abbott, Nadia Whittome and Clive Lewis are among 17 parliamentarians campaigning to ensure the US President isn’t allowed to address the Houses of Parliament. Their Early Day Motion rehearses various criticisms of the President – ‘misogynism, racism and xenophobia’ and his treatment of Ukraine – and says it would be ‘inappropriate’ for Trump to be given the honour when he comes to the UK in September.
Like him or loathe him, MPs must treat Trump with respec
This legislative stunt is unlikely to trouble Trump. The Early Day Motion (EDM) in itself is meaningless. It is a device for MPs to give vent to their feelings but, although it is formally a motion to put to the House of Commons, it will never be debated because EDMs never reach that stage. They are known widely at Westminster as ‘parliamentary graffiti’. It does not represent a groundswell of feeling, having fewer than 20 signatures, many of whom are the usual suspects: Zarah Sultana, John McDonnell and Jon Trickett. It is a left-wing claque arriving at the righteous outrage du jour.
In fairness to those who have made their mark, many of the accusations against Trump are hard to refute. He is a misogynist. He does have a breathtaking disregard for democracy. And his conduct towards Ukraine, while bending over backwards to accommodate Vladimir Putin, has been shameful. These charges may all be true, but so is one other regrettable, distasteful but inescapable fact: he is President of the United States, and is likely to remain so until January 2029, barring divine intervention. This means that, like him or loathe him, MPs must treat Trump with respect.
When the Prime Minister travelled to Washington in February for his first formal meeting with Trump, he took with him a letter from King Charles III, inviting the President to undertake a second state visit to the United Kingdom. This is a rare honour, if not quite as rare as Trump has come to believe; no other American president has made two state visits, but President Poincaré of the French Republic did, in 1913 and 1919, as have six European monarchs in the past.
Sir Keir Starmer calculated, rightly or wrongly, that Trump’s affection for Britain as a concept – if not its current political leadership – and especially for the Royal Family was a potent and unique weapon in his diplomatic arsenal. The purpose of diplomacy is to advance the national interest by any peaceful means, one of which is, let us not be coy, ingratiating ourselves with the most powerful nation on earth. The state visit may not have promoted the UK directly to Most Favoured Nation status, but the President seemed genuinely pleased by the invitation, and he has spoken highly of the King.
So to the Early Day Motion and the 17 virtuous MPs. They are particularly concerned that Trump should not be invited to address both Houses of Parliament, a grand event staged in the Robing Room, the Royal Gallery or, exceptionally, Westminster Hall. These addresses are not a necessary part of a state visit, and only three US presidents have been accorded the honour: Ronald Reagan (1982), Bill Clinton (1995) and Barack Obama (2011).
Bluntly, the argument put forward is that Donald Trump is a bad man who has done bad things, and the parliamentary authorities (it would require the consent of the Speaker of the House of Commons and the Lord Speaker) should not be seen to endorse or even excuse his badness by giving him a platform. Those with longer memories will remember that Speaker John Bercow characteristically played to the gallery by preemptively ruling out an address during Trump’s first term.
But what do the signatories of the EDM think diplomacy is for? Trump has been invited to make him better disposed towards the UK. That is hardly going to be helped by conspicuously ruling out a potential part of his schedule, one which was not automatic but now has been irrevocably put on the agenda by the EDM itself. To imagine that the opportunity to address both Houses is some kind of seal of approval is naïve: MPs and peers have in the past sat through the words of Nikita Khruschev, Daniel Ortega, Hu Jintao, Xi Jinping and Joko Widodo without deeming any of them to be saints.
Effective foreign policy sometimes means smiling when you do not mean it. If President Trump is making a state visit, it would be absurd and counter-productive posing to grant every part of his schedule grudgingly. Diplomacy is not just telling your friends how much you value them: they are already your friends. Britain is better off with America’s good wishes, and the government should focus on the end result; the 17 MPs who have signed the EDM seem more concerned with their own moral purity. Britain could pay a heavy price for their stunt.
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