Kwasi Kwarteng: Somehow the odd couple of Theresa May and Donald Trump need to find a way to work together

There is little natural connection between Trump and May but the partnership has never been more crucial
Special relationship: President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Theresa May meet in Washington today
Getty Images
Kwasi Kwarteng27 January 2017
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Theresa May’s meeting with Donald Trump promises to be one of the great meetings of modern political history. You could not get two more contrasting characters. One is the daughter of a vicar, married to the same person for nearly 40 years. The other is a thrice-married son of a New York real estate developer with a flair for flamboyant gestures and outrageous controversy.

The 18th-century French critic Comte de Buffon once wrote: “Le style c’est l’homme même” (the style is the man himself). For both Trump and May, style is key. Each has crafted an individual and highly personal manner that has served them well. The Prime Minister is coolly understated; she has a flair for fashion. Fashionistas who would never dream of voting Conservative have said they like the fact that May takes fashion seriously. Long before she became Prime Minister, she was known for her penchant for kitten-heeled shoes. It became a trademark, much like Winston Churchill’s cigar.

Trump’s sartorial taste is plain, conventional and boring. He tends to wear blue suits that don’t seem particularly well tailored. On the campaign trail, Trump relentlessly wore a blue suit, white shirt and red tie, the colours of the American flag, as if to underline his patriotism. As one commentator remarked: “You can see eagles, American flags and apple pie flying out of his ass.”

No, Trump’s dress sense is not what distinguishes him as a politician. His language, however, is extraordinary and unique. One French translator has already commented on the near impossibility of translating Trump’s speeches into French. “He seems not to know quite where he is going,” Bérengère Viennot told The Los Angeles Review of Books.

But direction is not the point with Trump. His words are all about projection, a display of power and ruthlessness developed on the mean streets of the New York property scene. Words are simply used to portray certain characteristics. They mean very little in themselves. The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes remarked that “words are the counters of wise men, and the money of fools”. Trump’s supporters intuitively understood this. They did not take him literally. When Trump says “I beat China all the time”, his supporters do not actually believe that he beats a nation of around 1.5 billion people “all the time”. Rather, they take away the idea that this is someone who is strong, and who will fight for them.

The British Parliament works in a totally different way. There, words mean everything. The most minor inconsistencies are picked up by the Opposition and the media. British prime ministers cannot be as blasé with their public utterances as President Trump.

The conventionalities of parliamentary debate are, to the unseasoned observer, arcane and somewhat ritualistic. It would be impossible to imagine a Trump in our parliamentary system. The old world courtesies, the references to “honourable members” and the tradition of addressing remarks through the Speaker would simply not fit easily with the bombastic showman that is Donald Trump.

The convention which prevents MPs referring directly to other Members as “you”, to avoid making personal insults, would blunt Trump’s gladiatorial style. The playground epithets Trump used to destroy his opponents — “Lyin’ Ted” “crooked Hillary” and “littl’ Marco” — would be ruled out of order by any British Speaker. We just don’t do that kind of confrontation in British politics.

The manner in which Trump and May engage on a one-to-one basis will be interesting. It’s unlikely that Trump will be as vulgar as John F Kennedy, who crudely remarked to the elderly Prime Minister Harold Macmillan: “I get a migraine headache if I don’t get a strange piece of ass every day.” Trump, however, is no stranger to coarse vulgarity. Indeed, his presidential campaign was almost derailed in the final few weeks by the release of tapes that exposed the misogynistic side of his character.

There is nothing in Trump’s past to suggest he is partial to Jane Austen or Doctor Who. I doubt, although I may be mistaken, that the Prime Minister knows the first thing about American football. Trump’s office in Trump Tower is full of American football helmets and magazine covers. It look like a first-year college student’s room but on a much bigger scale.

Trump’s style, above all, has been honed by the entertainment industry. His communication skills are those of the reality TV star. Outrageous, unpredictable events, crude characterisations, and all the cheap thrills of TV soap operas are his stock-in-trade. It was Trump’s genius to convert these skills into an effective political campaign.

Culturally, let’s face it, there is very little that connects our Prime Minister to Trump. They are two people who, if it were not for the vagaries of politics, are unlikely ever to have met. In many ways, they are the odd couple, forced together by pressure of circumstances.

Popular movements in each of their countries overturned what, to many, seemed like a cosy and smug political elite. As the beneficiaries of the people’s anger, both May and Trump will make common cause. May’s stated mission is to make “Brexit mean Brexit”, so that Britain leaves the EU unequivocally, with the minimum of fuss. Trump’s stated aim is simply to “make America great again”.

There has been much talk of the “special relationship”, the unique bond that supposedly connects the United Kingdom with the United States. People have even referred to the bond between Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. They, however, were united by a common purpose. They were both unashamedly ideological. They both promoted free trade and capitalism, and stood belligerently against communism and the power of the Soviet Union.

President Trump and Mrs May both carry a huge burden of expectation from electorates fed up, or simply bored, with the old way of doing things. At a deeper level, they probably feel instinctively that each relies on the success of the other. They are like shipwreck survivors on a raft, relying on each other while they navigate turbulent waters.

Kwasi Kwarteng is the Conservative MP for Spelthorne

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