Trump fever

Throughout John Bercow’s political career he has felt the need to atone for his student days when he was a member of the Monday Club. The Monday Club’s policy called for an end to Pakistani immigration, voluntary repatriation, and other ideas that would make Donald Trump blanch. Bercow now parades himself as a champion of liberal values and this week declared that he would not invite Trump to address Parliament on account of his ‘racism’ and ‘sexism’. He had welcomed China’s Xi Jinping and Indonesia’s President Yudhoyono, but decided he must draw the line at the President of the United States.

In so doing, Bercow has helped demonstrate why Trump won the American presidential election. Through his bombastic language and taunting 3 a.m. tweets, the US President has perfected the art of winding up his critics to the point that they begin to sound even less reasonable than him. Thus he ensures that, while he will never convince many Democrats that he is their president, support among his own supporters remains solid, and independent voters grow wary of his opponents. Trump built his candidacy around the conceit that a war needs fighting against the liberal elite that has lost bearing on reality, and that elite seems only too keen to prove him right.

The many marches and protests against Trump’s travel ban on citizens of seven countries has served only to stir up feelings among those who already opposed him. A CNN poll this week suggests that 47 per cent of Americans agree with the measure — almost exactly the same percentage of voters who backed Trump in November’s election. Support has remained strong in spite of obvious evidence of the cack-handed way in which the ban was implemented. An Iraqi interpreter who had already passed vetting to work for US forces found himself banned from America, along with many others who already had green cards and visas.