Don’t blame Amber Rudd for reminding MPs of ‘the bigger picture’ in the Donald Trump tweet scandal – she has a point

Even if Brexit goes as well as it possibly can, the UK will need some new partners around the world, when the Trump era will be just an unpleasant memory. Trump is not America, and America is not Trump

Poor Amber Rudd. I sound patronising, I know, but I don’t mean to be. I know she is a formidable politician, one of the few grown-ups in an intellectually underpowered Cabinet. So my pity, I hasten to add, is mixed with admiration. Someone, at a time like this, has got to tell the country to calm down about Trump’s tweets, and focus on the “bigger picture”. So you have to feel some human empathy for someone who has to hold the Government line at a moment like this.

The President is a man who, some people are seriously suggesting, is nuts; who peddles hate videos; who disrespects an old ally. Maybe Amber Rudd feels the same way. She could be easily forgiven for wondering whether this was what she went into politics for as she made her way to the House of Commons to answer emergency questions about the tweets and Trump’s forthcoming (or not) state visit. Being a mature and responsible politician, she did her very best with it. There isn’t, in truth, much we can do about Trump, and we ought not delude ourselves otherwise.

Rudd was right, in other words, both to hint heavily that President Trump is a fool, or worse and the world would be better off if he turned off his Twitter feed for good. She is also right to imply that he is unlikely to do that just because some Brits are getting shirty with him (even if they include the Prime Minister). She skilfully parried the tricky question of withdrawing the invitation for the state visit, which would drag the Queen into the row and merely enrage Trump further. She parroted the usual lines about the special relationship giving us special leverage in our advice to our powerful friend and ally; but I wonder too if she really believes in that.

The brutal truth about the British is that most Americans have never heard of this “special relationship”, and the American establishment can (with the exception of spying) take it or leave it, as they once told Tony Blair over Iraq (and how we wished they had). The UK ranks behind the likes of Canada, Japan, China, Saudi Arabia, Israel and, er, Russia, in the hierarchy of American priorities – and maybe even behind the European Union. John F Kennedy and Ronald Reagan might have heeded their British counterparts, but they were unusual – and Donald Trump is someone who won’t listen to anyone if he doesn’t want to, including his cronies and family.

Most of all, though, the Home Secretary was right to remind the indignant MPs all around her – Tories too – that the genuinely special intelligence arrangements the British have with the Americans have saved British lives. These links represent a precious security resource, and cannot be taken for granted (in the past they have been cancelled after spy scandals that proved the British couldn’t be trusted). We would not want a petulant President Trump to cancel our existing intelligence conventions with the US.

Rudd didn’t add – no doubt because she herself finds it too irksome – that, post-Brexit, the British will desperately need a trade deal with the world’s largest economy, even as it retreats into “America First” protectionism. It is perfectly possible, if unprovable, by the way, that Trump thought Britain First was a sort of “tribute band” for his own brand of politics rather than the evil, though fringe and obscure, outfit it actually is. That’s not to condone what he did, for the substance of it was basically fake news/hate, whatever its provenance, but he might not have retweeted the fake news videos had he been in full possession of the facts. Maybe.

Nonetheless, even if Brexit goes as well as it possibly can, the UK will need some new partners around the world, when the Trump era will be just an unpleasant memory. Trump is not America, and America is not Trump.

Amber Rudd must sometimes think she has woken up in a foreign land, if I can recycle an old Tory slogan. She was a typical product of the all-too-brief Cameron-Osborne ascendancy in her party, which married social liberalism with a traditional Tory belief in enterprise and sound public finances. She campaigned hard to keep Britain inside the European Union, and in the snap election this year, turned up at the TV debates when Theresa May ducked out, and at a difficult time for her personally. For her troubles she almost lost her seat in Hastings – to Labour, not Ukip. She has had to sit in Cabinet with men who are alleged sex pests, and she herself once said she’d not share a cab home with Boris Johnson. Around her sitting at the Cabinet table are men and women who are either woefully intellectually underpowered (Leadsom, Fox, May herself), maniacal (Patel, Boris) or brilliant but disastrously misguided (Gove, Boris again). Only Philip Hammond and David Lidington fall into the smart-and-sensible category, so far as can be judged. As Trump might say – Pathetic! Sad!

The Home Secretary is in a job that is routinely described as the “graveyard of political careers”, though the last incumbent managed to do rather well out of it, for a time at least. The Tory Party should soon see whether it needs to take note of the “bigger picture” on Brexit, and whether the deals that are shaping up are likely to be in the national interest, and that Brexit really will be better than No Brexit. Either way, Amber Rudd is by far the best qualified of the available candidates to take the country forwards and emerge from the next Tory leadership crisis, and her time must surely come.

Maybe it will fall to her to host President Trump’s state visit. I doubt she’d hold his hand.