Читать книгу Fall Out: A Year of Political Mayhem - Tim Shipman, Tim Shipman - Страница 27

One minute before midnight a huge cheer rang out from the packed auditorium of the US embassy in London’s Grosvenor Square. The giant screen flashed with the news that the Associated Press were calling the state of Vermont for Hillary Clinton, with its three electoral votes. The cream of political London and liberal high society let out a sigh of relief. It was presidential election night and the Democrat frontrunner finally had a state on the board. London was five hours ahead of the US and drink had been taken. In the foyer outside and in a large party area downstairs, thousands of well-dressed Londoners congratulated themselves on having the best invite in town, rubbing shoulders with cabinet ministers and veterans of past Washington administrations. Even the lead singer of the rock band Muse was there.

To those following things more closely on the big screen, the Vermont cheer would be as significant as the ‘Sunderland roar’ on Brexit night, the first symbol of a world turned upside down. Talking together against the far wall of the auditorium, several journalists, a minister of the crown and a special adviser smiled at the naïvety of the other guests. ‘Forget Vermont,’ said one. ‘Look at Florida.’ In the Sunshine State Clinton was closing on Trump, but not fast enough. Elsewhere Trump was heading for victory in the rust-belt states of Michigan and Wisconsin, the latter of which Clinton had never even bothered to visit. As it became clear that Trump was on course for the most unlikely victory in presidential history, the crowd thinned out, leaving just the hardcore hacks and US political nerds while the man from Muse posed for selfies. The Vermont roar was symbolic of a liberal establishment that had again got it wrong.

As dawn broke over London, Sir Kim Darroch, the UK’s ambassador to the United States, sat down to write a memo, explaining what had happened and what Britain should now do to cash in. He wrote, ‘At 6 p.m. this evening, Donald Trump was perhaps the only person in America who still believed he had a chance … The Trump team, some of whom we were with early in the evening, were sure they had lost; the Clinton campaign was celebrating. By 7 p.m., Fox News was privately telling the campaign that they were going to call the race for Clinton before 10 p.m. … then the results started to come in.’ He said the ‘electoral earthquake’ which had propelled Trump to power had led to ‘fear and loathing’ in Washington. However, he suggested, Trump was ‘an outsider and unknown quantity’, who ‘will surely evolve and, particularly, be open to outside influence if pitched right. Having, we believe, built better relationships with his team than have the rest of the Washington diplomatic corps, we should be well placed to do this.’1

Darroch – a bright, smooth operator who had held the most prestigious diplomatic posts in Brussels, Downing Street and the Foreign Office under four prime ministers – had engaged with Trump surrogates like Senator Jeff Sessions over a period of months, as had Foreign Office minister Alan Duncan. But Darroch had a problem. Bright and smooth did not get you very far with Donald Trump himself. The ambassador was already behind a self-appointed British envoy to the court of The Donald: Nigel Farage.

Theresa May was on her way home from a trade trip to India as America was voting. Tom Swarbrick, the prime minister’s head of broadcast, attended the embassy party. He left at 4 a.m. and went straight to Downing Street. Around 7 a.m., with Hillary Clinton conceding defeat, Swarbrick was slumped dishevelled in his chair when there was a knock on the door. ‘Morning, Tom,’ said a very breezy voice. Swarbrick leapt to his feet and said, ‘Good morning, Prime Minister.’ May looked perfectly refreshed. ‘So, what’s your plan?’ Katie Perrior was in her office curling her hair with hot irons a little later when the prime minister walked in – another rare foray into the world of the press office – to agree the quote they would issue to reporters. ‘If my friends from Erith School could have seen me, they would have choked on their toast,’ she told a friend later.

May recorded a clip for the broadcasters congratulating Trump on his victory, in which she said, ‘We have a longstanding and enduring special relationship which is built on our shared values, of freedom, of democracy and enterprise. I look forward to working with president-elect Trump to ensure we can maintain the security and prosperity of our two nations in the future.’ In the months ahead that relationship was to experience unusual strains, and efforts to get it to work for Brexit Britain would stall.

After May had said her piece, members of the press office – Perrior, Swarbrick, Lizzie Loudon and Tim Smith – reflected on Trump’s populist campaign, coming hot on the heels of Brexit, and what it meant for British politics. A source observed, ‘We collectively said to each other, “This is why you cannot underestimate Corbyn. If he campaigns on the basis of emotion, he can win. The government does facts, but we don’t live in facts any more. We have to explain facts through emotional stories. You have to tell stories.”’ It was an analysis they would have done well to remember when May called her own election.

Trump’s victory sent shockwaves through Whitehall and prompted hasty assessments of the damage he might do. Concern focused on his declaration that NATO was ‘obsolete’. Trump’s aide Steve Bannon, the alt-right theorist who ran Breitbart News before revitalising Trump’s campaign, was a vociferous opponent of the EU and had professed the hope that it would break up. EU foreign ministers called an immediate ‘panic meeting’ as if a war had broken out rather than democratic elections in a close ally. It was boycotted by Boris Johnson, who told his counterparts, ‘I think it’s time we snapped out of the collective whinge-o-rama,’ turning an attempt to curry favour with the new administration into an insult to Britain’s negotiating partners.

In what seemed to be a snub to the UK – but was probably an early sign of chaos over protocol in the Trump White House – May was only the tenth foreign leader to be called by Trump. The Australian premier Malcolm Turnbull jumped the queue by getting the new president’s mobile number from Greg Norman, the golfer. In recompense, Boris Johnson was the first foreign politician on vice president Mike Pence’s call list. The media wondered if Britain’s lowly place in the queue was anything to do with a tweet by Fiona Hill saying ‘Trump is a chump’, and one by Nick Timothy in May, which read, ‘As a Tory I don’t want any “reaching out” to Trump.’ Yet May’s team now began a systematic wooing operation to get the prime minister to the front of the queue for a White House visit.

On Saturday 12 November, Darroch was just digesting the fact that his election night memo had been leaked to the Sunday Times when things got worse. On Twitter there appeared pictures of Farage posing with Trump in front of the golden doors of his apartment at the top of Trump Tower in New York. The president was in the middle of picking his senior staff but still had time to sit down for nearly an hour with Farage, the businessman Arron Banks, who had funded the Leave cause to the tune of £6 million, and Gerry Gunster, the US political consultant who had brought some order to their anarchic campaign. They were accompanied by Banks’ sidekick and spokesman Andy Wigmore, a part-time diplomat, and Raheem Kassam, Farage’s former spokesman, who worked for the British end of Bannon’s Breitbart operation.

Farage had attended a rally to support Trump in the final weeks of the campaign and was on Fox News most nights predicting that he would win. Now the favour was returned. Trump believed he would not have won without the example of Brexit and saw Farage as the sine qua non of the Leave campaign. The president-elect’s opening question was, ‘Nigel, do you think Brexit was bigger or was my election bigger?’ Farage deferred to Trump, calling Trump’s win ‘Brexit plus, plus plus’. Banks explained, ‘What Trump clearly recognises is that it’s all part of the same anti-establishment movement that’s been spreading like wildfire. In his own mind, he sees the connection between the two. He sees Nigel as the architect of Brexit.’ The president made warm noises about a free trade deal with Britain, and Farage also got Trump to agree to the return to the Oval Office of the bust of Winston Churchill which had been removed by Barack Obama.

The meeting was embarrassing for the government, more so when Farage began offering himself as an informal envoy to the White House, an idea closed down fast. A Downing Street aide said, ‘I think the UK brings enough to the special relationship for it to be special without Nigel Farage.’ By the time Farage met Trump, the government had already dangled the prospect of a state visit to Britain, using the queen as their ‘secret weapon’ to woo the president. Trump gushed to Farage and Banks, ‘My late mother, Mary, loved the Queen. I’m going to meet her, too. I can’t wait to come over to England. My mum would be chuffed to bits when I meet the Queen.’

That did not stop Trump making mischief. On 21 November, he tweeted, ‘Many people would like to see @Nigel_Farage represent Great Britain as their Ambassador to the United States. He would do a great job!’ Downing Street said there was ‘no vacancy’, but for Darroch it was another setback. It was ten more days before May received a second call from Trump to help cement their relationship.

Boris Johnson also had some ground to make up. In 2015, after Trump had suggested there were ‘no go areas’ of London where the British police feared to tread, Johnson publicly accused him of ‘betraying a quite stupefying ignorance that makes him, frankly, unfit to hold the office of president of the United States’. In early October the foreign secretary had told a friend, ‘This is an election that is going to expose America’s primal psyche as never before. If it is Trump, it will be a victory of really base daytime TV Redneck America.’

Now the foreign secretary and his advisers had emerged as key contacts for Mike Pence and the ideological end of team Trump – Stephen Miller and chief strategist Steve Bannon – while Hill and Timothy dealt with Reince Priebus, the chief of staff, and Katie Perrior talked to Sean Spicer, her opposite number in the White House. Johnson’s advisers were keen to go to the US to meet the people they had been speaking to on the phone, but it was decreed they could not travel before Hill and Timothy. The decision would lead to mounting frustration.

The chiefs finally flew to Washington in secret in mid-December to meet Priebus and around ten other key Trump World contacts at a series of hastily arranged meetings in hotels, restaurants and coffee shops. To the rage of one colleague, the chiefs – who were accompanied by Johnny Hall, a private secretary, and Richard ‘Tricky’ Jackson, May’s head of operations – flew business class. ‘That’s one of those things nobody does,’ the source said. ‘It is taxpayers’ money. They should have just phoned ahead and got an upgrade.’ The chiefs did not apologise for their comments on Twitter, which were not raised by the Americans either. Hill and Timothy met business associates of Trump and reported back to May, ‘He’s not a politician and he doesn’t behave like a politician and if you want to understand the administration and influence it then the best thing you can do is a build a relationship with him on those terms.’ The reward came on 8 January when Trump announced – via Twitter, of course – ‘I look very much forward to meeting Prime Minister Theresa May in Washington in the Spring. Britain, a longtime U.S. ally, is very special!’

The same day Trump announced May’s visit, the prime minister was due to do her first broadcast interview of the year, the launch show for Sky News’s new Sunday political presenter Sophy Ridge. With Trump at the top of the news, Katie Perrior expected the young host would put her boss on the spot about a tape that had emerged during the presidential election campaign in which Trump boasted about groping women, saying he could ‘grab them by the pussy’ because of his celebrity status.

On the way to the studio in her armoured Jaguar, Perrior embarked on one of the most awkward conversations that can ever have been had with a British prime minister. To the snorts of the police protection officer, Perrior told May she would probably be asked what she thought of Trump’s ‘pussy’ comments, and warned her the cameras would zoom in tight on her face, expecting her jaw to fall into the grimace that seized her at moments of unease. ‘I don’t do that,’ May said, denying the evidence of a thousand press photographs. ‘You do,’ said Perrior. ‘Keep completely and utterly still – poker face.’2

When Ridge asked May how the comments made her feel as a woman, the prime minister kept her composure and replied, ‘I think that’s unacceptable.’

The chiefs’ trip had released Boris Johnson to make his own connections with team Trump. That night, 8 January, the foreign secretary was in New York for the first face-to-face meetings at Trump Tower. ‘The Number 10 view was, “Boris, you speak to Bannon”,’ a Foreign Office source said. ‘They’re both agitators and disruptors. Bannon was blowing up the realm. Boris is the same.’ In the boardroom on the twentieth floor of Trump’s empire, Johnson and his team met Bannon and Jared Kushner, husband of the president-elect’s daughter Ivanka and a key power broker. Bannon pointed to the ceiling and said, ‘He’s only three floors up,’ as if Trump were a godlike presence gazing down on proceedings.

The exchanges were frank. One of those present said, ‘It wasn’t jovial. It was a very serious meeting.’ Conversation roamed from the Middle East peace process to NATO, the Syrian civil war and Russia. ‘Kushner went in quite hard, they weren’t able to push him around. Boris pushed back.’ The main issue for the British was to ascertain how Trump would approach global affairs and whether he was planning to tear up the international order to affect a new partnership with Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

There were jaw-on-the-floor moments. When one of the Brits asked, ‘What do you give Russia to get them to the table?’ the reply astonished Johnson. ‘Steve Bannon being mischievous said if they want to move into some Baltic state, “We’re relaxed,”’ a source present said. To suggest that Russia be given carte blanche to march into a NATO state that both countries were sworn to defend on the pretext of protecting the Russian population was astonishing. Johnson leapt in, ‘What? Like the Sudeten Germans?’ comparing such a move to Hitler’s march into Czechoslovakia in 1938. ‘They recoiled,’ the source said. ‘Boris’s grasp of history outflanked them on a bunch of things. I don’t think they were serious.’

After three hours the meeting broke up. Thereafter Johnson and Bannon spoke most weeks. Kushner also kept in touch with Johnson and spoke to his aide Liam Parker about the Middle East peace process. Parker and Stephen Miller, Trump’s speechwriter and senior policy adviser, also conversed weekly.

The choreography continued a week later when Trump used an interview with Michael Gove, in his new guise as a Times journalist, to praise Britain as ‘smart’ for backing Brexit, and called Barack Obama’s statement during the EU referendum campaign that Britain was at the ‘back of the queue’ for a trade deal a ‘bad statement’. He said, ‘We’re gonna work very hard to get it done quickly.’3

British officials were left open-mouthed and concerned by Trump’s uncompromising inauguration speech, which appropriated the ‘America First’ slogan of isolationists before the Second World War, pledged to ‘end the carnage’ on America’s streets and ‘make America great again’ – an oration even George W. Bush dismissed as ‘some weird shit’. However, they were encouraged that Trump did not show his face at a party the night before thrown by the self-styled ‘Bad boys of Brexit’, Farage, Banks and co., who had taken over the top floor of the Hay Adams hotel.

Word spread that Trump was already calling the prime minister ‘my Maggie’ in an attempt to recreate the chemistry of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. The president had also expressed his hopes for a ‘Full Monty’ state visit, with nine holes of golf at Balmoral, a personal tour of the Churchill War Rooms with Boris Johnson and dinner with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. British officials had put on the table the idea of a financial services passporting deal with the US as the precursor to a trade deal. There was, however, friction over the prospect of Trump seeing Prince Charles. The president’s aides made clear that, as a climate change sceptic, he did not wish to be lectured by the heir to the throne about global warming.

Trump was also angry at the publication of a dossier by a former MI6 spy, Christopher Steele, which had been prepared for his political opponents, alleging that Russia held compromising material on him, including videos of him being urinated on by Muscovite prostitutes. Denouncing the story as ‘fake news’, Trump said, ‘I’m also very much of a germaphobe, by the way, believe me.’ The admission was about to impact on May’s visit.

May saw the Trump visit as key to her Brexit strategy. She wanted a close relationship with the US and the prospect of a preferential trade deal. But she also sought to use the visit to ensure that Trump was engaged in Europe and NATO. May first used a speech to Republican congressmen in Philadelphia – the first by a British prime minister to a party retreat – to talk about American leadership and support for the post-war institutions. Calling NATO ‘the cornerstone of the West’s defence’, she admitted that ‘some of these organisations are in need of reform’ but said Britain and America should ‘recommit ourselves to the responsibility of leadership in the modern world’. Tackling Bannon’s views head on, May added, ‘It remains overwhelmingly in our interests – and in those of the wider world – that the EU should succeed.’

Diplomatic channels quickly detected approval from the EU27. One of May’s aides said, ‘The Europeans were anxious about the fact we were invited so early. Trump saying he wanted to break up NATO made them feel defensive and threatened. They were relieved we were defending European values.’ Behind the scenes in Philadelphia, May had conversations with Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House of Representatives, and Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, about how to deal with and rein in Trump. ‘They were saying, “We can restrain this crazy man. We’re all scared but if we work together in this network we can achieve things.”’

On 27 January, a week to the day after Trump’s inauguration, Theresa May became the first foreign leader to stride into the White House under its new ownership. She did so accompanied by a trio of female aides – Fiona Hill, Katie Perrior and Lizzie Loudon. Tom Swarbrick, head of broadcast, and Chris Brannigan, head of government relations, who had both hoped to attend, were told they were staying at home. This was Hill’s answer to the Pussygate controversy. ‘It was Fi’s decision that we were going to have this all-female presentation, because that was a way to challenge Donald Trump.’

The two delegations held a closed meeting with a small number of aides, a joint press conference in the East Room of the White House and then a working lunch with a larger cast. In the closed session, Trump repeated his view that Brexit was ‘really good for the UK’ and added, ‘I’m really struck by the number of meetings I’ve had in which people say they feel they’ve got the UK back again. That really pleases me.’ They agreed that Jeremy Heywood would be the point man on trade discussions with Gary Cohn, the director of Trump’s economic council. May happily unveiled the Churchill bust, which had been returned to a side table in the Oval Office.

May had already spoken to Trump about the importance of NATO in both her prior telephone conversations. Now she raised it again, addressing him as ‘Mr President’ but giving him ‘a very hard time’ until Trump relented. He said, ‘I don’t want to be a problem for NATO, I’m 100 per cent for NATO, you can say that.’ In the press conference May did just that, using her opening statement to force Trump into repeating his statement publicly. She said, ‘We’ve reaffirmed our unshakeable commitment to this alliance. Mr President, I think you said, you confirmed that you’re 100 per cent behind NATO.’ As May fixed him with a steely glare, Trump nodded and mouthed, ‘True.’

The mood music was good as Trump showed his serious side in the closed meeting. A Downing Street source said, ‘He was on top of any number of quite complex briefs and he’d only been president for a week. That impressed Theresa because she’s a details girl.’ Over lunch Trump also turned on the charm, addressing May as ‘Theresa’. ‘When I come to England I want to see you first on arrival,’ he told her. ‘I always keep menu cards for significant moments.’ He promptly handed his to a staff member, saying: ‘Keep that safe. I had lunch with the British prime minister.’

As they walked down the White House colonnade after the press conference, Trump took May’s hand while the pair went down a ramp, providing all the world’s press with the Kodak moment they wanted. Yet this was not quite the act of chivalry it appeared. The footage showed a man slightly unsteady on his feet. Word quickly spread through the White House press corps and May’s aides that Trump had a phobia of stairs and slopes – a condition called bathmophobia. ‘You see his hand go out almost instinctively for help,’ said a British official. One American reporter pointed out sardonically, ‘Trump tells people he hates stairs and ramps and hates germs, so when he gets to a staircase with a dirty handrail he doesn’t know what to do.’

If that incident highlighted the oddities of dealing with Trump, May was quickly appraised about the controversies as well. In their meetings Trump had mentioned his plans to restrict arrivals to the US from six predominantly Muslim countries. May left Washington and was in the air to Ankara, where she was due to sign a defence deal with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, when news broke that Trump had just signed an executive order imposing the ban, prompting the claim May had gone from visiting ‘a crackpot to a despot’. Refugees in the air would arrive at US immigration to be told they were no longer allowed into the country. The move, a campaign pledge of Trump’s, caused an outcry that left May looking flat-footed. At a joint press conference with Binali Yildirim, the Turkish prime minister, she refused three times to say what she thought about Trump’s decision until she was heckled by reporters shouting, ‘Answer the question.’ Even then she managed only, ‘The United States is responsible for the United States’ policy on refugees.’ Her desire to parade her new relationship with Trump, her own tough line on immigration and her disdain for dancing to the tune of twenty-four-hour news combined to create a public relations disaster.

It was left to Boris Johnson to sort out the mess and ensure British citizens were exempted from the ban. Downing Street arranged a conference call between May, Johnson and Amber Rudd, the home secretary. ‘Talk to your opposite numbers,’ she said. ‘We’ve got to try and fix this.’ Nick Timothy liaised with the foreign secretary, who spoke to Rex Tillerson, Trump’s secretary of state, and then the White House. A Downing Street aide said, ‘Boris ended up on the phone to Steve Miller and hammered out an agreement. Boris said, “Can I get that in writing?” Miller sat at his computer, Kushner banged it over to us. We checked it with Number 10. Katie Perrior ran it past Sean Spicer, who took it to the president. You might say it’s a bit strange that the British foreign secretary is on the phone to a White House staffer but this is an unusual administration.’

Unusual or not, the senior figures in the British government had now aligned themselves indelibly with the most controversial figure ever to occupy his office. It is hard to fault the desire to put Britain at the front of the queue to influence the new president and secure a post-Brexit trade deal, but in the coming months such eagerness began to look like an error.

The idea of a state visit by Trump attracted the threat of mass protests at home. On 6 February, the Speaker of the Commons, John Bercow, announced that he would be ‘strongly opposed’ to Trump giving an address in Parliament’s Westminster Hall, an honour accorded to Barack Obama but one that had not been offered to Trump.

In March a fresh row erupted when Sean Spicer, the president’s press secretary, repeated a claim made by an analyst on Fox News that GCHQ – the British intelligence listening station – had been used by the Obama administration to spy on Trump Tower. In a break from the tradition that the government does not comment on intelligence matters, GCHQ – with Boris Johnson’s backing – issued a furious response calling the allegations ‘nonsense – they are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored’. General H. R. McMaster, Trump’s national security adviser, contacted his opposite number Mark Lyall Grant to apologise and Spicer conveyed his regrets to Kim Darroch.

The following week, Johnson visited the White House to meet Reince Priebus, Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, and had McMaster over for dinner at Darroch’s residence. It was a trip that coincided with the Westminster terror attack, in which an Islamist mowed down pedestrians on Westminster bridge before stabbing a policeman to death. Miller told Johnson, ‘In twenty or thirty years’ time everyone’s going to look at Britain and think Brexit was the best thing you ever did.’

That spring, with the backlash against Trump’s continually erratic behaviour gathering pace in Britain, the president and May held another conversation in which Trump indicated he did not wish the state visit to go ahead if it meant he would face mass protests in The Mall. ‘I haven’t had great coverage out there lately, Theresa,’ he complained. May, perhaps with the sympathies of a fellow sufferer, replied, ‘Well, you know what the British press are like.’

Apparently hoping the prime minister could arrange better coverage, Trump said, ‘I still want to come, but I’m in no rush. So, if you can fix it for me, it would make things a lot easier. When I know I’m going to get a better reception, I’ll come and not before.’4

To those who listened in, Trump’s prickliness was not even the main feature of the call. More serious, to them, was the way he bamboozled May, throwing her off her talking points to the degree that she was unable to make the policy interventions civil servants had planned for her. ‘He’s totally disarming,’ a Downing Street aide said. ‘Normally when she goes into a meeting and she has two delivery points, she will deliver them. She’ll get a sheet saying, “You need to raise this issue. We want to move things in that direction. These are our two objectives for the call. You might also want to raise these points.” With Trump he’ll start with, “Theresa I love you, I’ve missed you.” She can’t speak to that. It’s not the way you are supposed to speak to each other in these telephone calls. Her deliverable gets totally shot out of the water and she just can’t grapple with it.’ The aide said May’s calls with Trump were ‘the only example I saw of her in work not delivering when she set out to deliver … It shows you something about his power. He’s a crazy person but there is a charisma and an effectiveness there. In speaking like that he prevents all sorts of conversations. He’s completely in control. It’s deeply worrying.’

By March, the prime minister had other problems. Having dealt with the international consequences of the world created by Brexit, May got back to work on the domestic issues. While she had been seeing Trump the Supreme Court had ruled on whether she could trigger Article 50 without parliamentary approval.