President Trump: State Visit

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2017 Westminster Hall

[Dr Lewis]

I am pleased to say that this is a debate about President Trump and whether he should come here. I believe that it is entirely right that he should come here. Therefore, issues about any extraneous matters are matters for debate perhaps at another time in another place, but not here or now.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way, but on what basis does he think giving President Trump a state visit will have the effect he believes? We have already told him he can have one, and just this weekend we hear him again talking about walking away from NATO.

[Dr Lewis]

I am not at all aware that he has talked about walking away from NATO. On the contrary, he has made two criticisms of NATO. One is that he believes that NATO has adapted insufficiently to meet the threat of international terrorism and is too solely focused on state-versus-state confrontation. The other criticism he has made is—if it is an extreme view, it is one shared by the Defence Select Committee—that countries are not spending enough on defence. He has rightly pointed out, as has his Secretary of Defence, that only five out of 28 NATO countries are paying even the 2% of GDP—which is not a target, but a minimum guideline. The failure of NATO countries to pay to protect themselves has been remarked upon time and again to no effect.

I finish with a point that may be strange to relate, but stranger things have happened in history: it may be that the only way to get NATO countries to pay up what they should in order to get the huge advantage of the American defence contribution—they spend 3.5% of their much larger GDP while so many of our NATO fellow member countries do not spend even 2% of their much smaller GDPs—is Donald Trump’s threat. If that is so, Donald Trump, ironically, may end up being the saviour of NATO, not its nemesis.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to take part in the debate and to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Turner. I congratulate the Petitions Committee on bringing it to us this afternoon and, in particular, I congratulate all those who set up and signed the petitions. For them to see the direct influence of that political activism on the business of this House has to be a good and positive development.

The argument advanced by those who support the extension of an invitation of this sort to President Trump, which was most thoughtfully expressed by the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the hon. Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt), is that essentially this is the spending of a measure of political capital, on which there will be a return. As the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee put it, the Prime Minister won an important reaffirmation of the special relationship. I have to say to all those who have advanced that argument: where is the evidence that that is in fact the case? I ask that because having offered President Trump a state visit, and the offer having been accepted, we have since seen a very different range of views coming from him that are not particularly helpful, particularly in relation to America’s future engagement through NATO—the relationship with Russia, for example.

[Stephen Doughty]

The right hon. Gentleman is making a very important point. Does he recall another British Prime Minister, one who did many good things but, I think, was deeply naive about the ability he thought he had to influence an American President, and where that led us?

[Mr Carmichael]

Indeed, and I had cause to reflect this weekend on that former Prime Minister.

My other concern is that we may have spent that capital in this way and it may or may not ultimately be effective, but this is week one of a four-year term. Having offered a state visit this time, what will we offer the next time we want to get a favourable response?

[Alex Salmond]

The Crown jewels.

[Mr Carmichael]

Will it be the Crown jewels? Who knows? Just about anything is possible these days.

Essentially, what we are talking about is a question of judgment, and in my view, the Prime Minister, in the exercise of her judgment, got it catastrophically wrong, not just in offering a state visit but, as others have observed, in doing so seven days after President Trump’s inauguration. That was not something that she just decided to do on the spur of the moment. We all know the Prime Minister well enough to know that it was not something she would have blurted out to fill an awkward pause in the conversation, so the question is: what was the motivation? My suspicion is that she was perhaps a little bit spooked by seeing the pictures of Nigel Farage at Trump Tower following the election in November, or it may be—as the right hon. Member for Gordon (Alex Salmond) suggested—that she was pursuing questions of trade deals post Brexit. Whatever the motivation, however, it has left us looking desperate and craven and rushing to embrace a presidency when the rest of the world is rushing away from it.

It is also worth remembering some of the things that that presidency involves and, in particular—this is my personal concern—President Trump’s determination or avowed intention to resurrect the use of torture.

[Mr Nigel Evans]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Carmichael]

I am sorry, but I am down to four minutes and I do not have any more injury time, as it is called.

Waterboarding or something

“a hell of a lot worse”

was the expression. When I asked the Foreign Secretary whether he had raised that with President Trump, he said that he did not discuss operational matters. Whether we share our intelligence with a country that condones the use of torture is not an operational matter. That is a matter of policy for every other country in the world and it should be a matter of policy for the United States of America as well.

I have no issue with the Prime Minister seeking to influence the President of the United States, but she should do it in a way that engages the relationship that we have enjoyed in the past; she should be seeking to build on that. If, and only if, she is successful in that should an offer such as the one that she has made be extended. That presumes, of course, that President Trump will be influenced. I see little evidence to support that contention. Even those few benign influences that are around him do not seem able to do that.

I start from the position of somebody who values the special relationship, but I understand that that special relationship is not between a Government and an Administration; it is between our two peoples. It is our shared history and our shared values that make it special and enduring, and that is what the Prime Minister risks doing severe damage to today.