Dear, oh dear. Will David Lammy never get it right? This morning he told the Today programme that Donald Trump is ‘funny, friendly and warm’, that he has ‘incredible grace’ and that he is full of generosity – the last remark apparently based on Trump offering him a second helping of chicken when they met for dinner last September. This is the same Donald Trump, presumably, whom Lammy previously described as a ‘woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath’ who was ‘deluded, dishonest, xenophobic, narcissistic’ and ‘no friend of Britain’. Lammy must really, really have wanted that extra helping of chicken.
It isn’t hard to guess what Trump himself thinks about Lammy’s backflip. He will be thinking that the man is a complete arse, and that he has got Britain’s foreign secretary wrapped around his little finger. He may even be calculating that he may be able to add the West Country as an appendage to New York State through the means of offering Lammy an extra dollop of pudding next time they dine together.
We know the measure of Trump by now. He likes strong leaders, not wimpish politicians – the latter of whom fill him with contempt. He is all threats and insults, until he actually meets the subject of his ire, at which point he turns on the charm. It is an age-old tactic to take people under your control by appealing to their inner Stockholm Syndrome. You condition them to think you are an outright ogre, so that when they come face to face and you show a little kindness, they are pathetically grateful for your gestures. Your captors go all meek and mild because they are afraid that if they say the wrong thing you will turn back into the ogre they thought you were. It is the tactic which Trump showed to devastating effect with Kim Jong-un: first he threatened him by saying he had a bigger nuclear button on his desk than Kim had on his. Then he met the North Korean and flattered him. Kim was curdled into submission.
Lammy has fallen for the same ruse. What he should be doing is playing Trump at his own game: insulting him in public, from a distance, but then turning on the charm when they meet. That is what would earn Trump’s respect. That is what he expects: he wants you to start from a position of seemingly uncompromising belligerence, but then to work towards doing a deal. What must he see in Lammy – and Keir Starmer, too, for that matter? A pair who can’t even get themselves a half-decent deal when they don’t need to do one. To listen to them on the Chagos Islands, you would think that Mauritius was the world power and Britain the minnow.
Trump doesn’t really deserve to be called a ‘neo-Nazi’. You have to be militaristic to justify being called that; Trump, on the other hand, seems utterly determined to avoid armed conflict. Indeed, he became the first US president of modern times not to be sucked into a war. But Lammy was more on the right lines when he used that phrase than with this morning’s glutinous tribute to the President-elect. Having taken that line, Lammy should have kept it up – and then turned all friendly when he came to meet Trump again.
Katy Balls discusses how Labour could handle the incoming Trump administration with Michael Gove and Sarah Elliott, of Republicans Overseas UK, on the latest Coffee House Shots podcast:
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