President Trump: State Visit

Nigel Adams Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2017 Westminster Hall

[Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)]

I congratulate the Petitions Committee on holding this debate. My constituency is the most diverse in Europe, and I am very proud of that. Almost everybody there has something to say about Trump and America.

The UK has, and always has had, a close working relationship with the United States, and it is important to continue that special relationship, but it comes with responsibilities. Today we speak in our Parliament, which is older than the United States itself, and we have a responsibility—as the elder, if you like—to guide that special relationship. It is often said that when America sneezes, the UK catches a cold. Well, right now America has a pretty nasty virus, and it is important that that virus does not spread. We have to stop the spread of that virus, because the closeness of our special relationship and the open wound we have, which was created by Brexit, leaves us quite vulnerable. We need to stop this contagion becoming an epidemic that leads to a pandemic from which the free world may never recover.

There is a lot of talk about the negotiations the Prime Minister delivered to continue our close working relationship. I say that we cannot sell our souls and what we believe in in order to sell our goods and services. That price is way too high to pay. The antidote to the virus is building bridges, not walls. It is listening to the thousands of people who have spoken, who have signed the petition and who are outside Parliament right now—we can hear them cheering and chanting. We hear people who have come out to march. People who have never marched before are outside Parliament right now because they believe in something. They believe in hope, not hate.

Edmund Burke said,

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

I am sure that he wanted to mention women in his speech and his wise statement. It was women who were the first to mobilise against Trump’s extremism; hundreds of thousands took to the streets, and they were rightly joined by men, boys, girls, those who are gay, straight, people of all religions and those of none. It is time that the United Kingdom united its voice against racism, bigotry, misogyny, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism and all the tools of division that have given Trump the White House. People have said today, “He is not racist, because—”. To me, that is the same as saying, “How can someone be a murderer?” It is the same way as a murderer can be a murderer and still have friends who are alive. It does not matter—he is still a racist and misogynistic.

We affect each other. I think Martin Luther King put it well. He said:

“I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be… this is the interrelated structure of reality.”

We are bound together in a “single garment of destiny” and we need each other in order to move forward. There is no way around it; we have to work with other people.

President Trump is the President. He can come and visit, but not on a state visit—that is taking it a little step too far. Trump’s message is not about togetherness; it is all about building walls and imposing bans. It is not about the truth; when he speaks and someone criticises or questions what he has said, he cries that it is fake news. There is a real issue and a problem that we have to address.

[Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Mr Andrew Turner (in the Chair)]

Order. We have reached 6.45 pm, so we must move on to Liam Byrne.

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[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Turner.

I want to start in the same place as my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), which is as someone who loves America very dearly. I am proud to be one of the Fulbright scholars in this place. I spent two happy years living in America. I criss-crossed the country in that time, and it was there where I learnt about America’s warmth, beauty, enterprise, energy, creativity, generosity and resolution in the face of adversity. Those are all the values we expect a President of the United States to epitomise. Those were the values of President Washington, whose birthday we mark today on Presidents’ day. It was once said that President Washington could not tell a lie; this President appears to find it difficult telling the truth.

What we need right now, in this world of division and discord, is a shared defence of the values we have in common. We need a shared stand against disunity, a shared stand against intolerance and a shared stand against hatred. That is what we should be celebrating with a presidential state visit to the United Kingdom and that, I am afraid, is what we are not going to get. My fear is that this visit will not be a showcase for those shared values. Actually, it will be a showcase for the divisions between us. We have to ask ourselves what will greet President Trump when he gets here. I argue that, frankly, we are going to get the kind of protest that we see outside now. In fact, what will greet the President will make the protest outside look like a tea party. What we hope to be a special relationship will emerge as a strained relationship.

If I thought, similar to my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford West (Naz Shah), that we could take the President for a non-alcoholic pint, sit him down for a cup of tea or take him out for a curry in the balti triangle of Birmingham, and send him away a better man, I would be all for rolling out the red carpet. But what the President has shown us by his conduct is that he is not a man who treasures two-way conversations; he is a man who treasures one-way conversations, ideally composed of 140 characters.

Some hon. Members have said that we have entertained all sorts. That is true. Diplomacy is not a business in which we can conduct conversations only with our friends. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) said, however, we hold America to a higher standard because it is our friend. Our shared values were pioneered in this Parliament in the years before the civil war. We gave those shared values to the pilgrim fathers, who took them and wrote the Mayflower compact, which became the American constitution. Those are values that we should be celebrating.

[Nigel Adams]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Liam Byrne]

I will not give way, because time is now very short.

My fear is that nothing would be left unsaid in this visit. That is a problem, because sometimes in diplomacy things are better left unsaid. In this visit we would hear the sirens and the protests, and my fear is that in parts of America that would be misinterpreted not as antipathy to Donald Trump but as antipathy to America. That is not something we want if we are to strengthen and reinforce the American special relationship.

The truth is that the history of British diplomacy and politics is littered with British Prime Ministers who overestimated their influence on American Presidents. I fear that our Prime Minister is about to add her name to that cast list. The state visit will be a mistake, but it is hard to withdraw the offer now. Frankly, our best hope is to keep it short, because my fear is that it will not be sweet.

[Ms Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh (Ochil and South Perthshire) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Mr Turner.

I ask the Members who are still here this evening to close their eyes and think about something for a minute: if we were talking about any other person—any other leader—in the world, wherever they might come from, would we be standing in such astute defence of him? I think perhaps not, and we should all think about what that says about us. Does it say that it does not matter what the President of the United States says, because he is a rich white man? I fear that that is exactly what it says.

Some have talked of others who have been invited on state visits to this country. I ask hon. Members who raised that issue this: which other head of state who has been invited on a state visit has posed a threat to our national security and has insulted a member of the royal family? I think the answer to that is none.

[Nigel Adams]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Ms Ahmed-Sheikh]

I will not, because it would not be fair to everybody else.

The right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) spoke of the path of righteousness—a very noble path indeed—but I fear that we have been here before. Many of us in the Chamber today were at the previous debate, including the hon. Member for Bradford West (Naz Shah), who spoke about inviting President Trump over—he was not then even the candidate for the Republican party—to see how we live in this country and to see our tolerant society, of which we are extremely proud. If anyone really thinks that would make much of a difference, I would comment on their innocence in this matter.

A comment was made about Trump being “refreshing”. I can understand why Government Members find it refreshing when an elected leader actually does what they said they were going to do during their election campaign—they are certainly unfamiliar with that concept—but I find the use of the word “refreshing” in this case rather abhorrent.

That takes me on to the comment made by the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh). He asked, “Which one of us hasn’t made a ridiculous sexual comment in the past?” It is unacceptable that he thinks that is the right point to bring to this forum. It is never, ever okay to make comments of a sexual nature to anybody. I know I speak for all the women in this House—if not some of the men too—when I say that we have had enough of it and we are certainly not going to put up with any more of it.

State visits have been an honour bestowed by our monarchy on the heads of states of other nations. This debate is not about how the USA voted—of course it is not. We know there were democratic elections, although President Trump has cast aspersions upon whether some of the people who voted had the right to do so. What this debate is about is who we are as a country made up of four nations. I have to say that I think the voices we can hear outside are perhaps more demonstrative of who we are as a country of many nations than some of the voices we have heard in here today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Ahmed-Sheikh]

Well, I will take his intervention then. I did not realise.

[Nigel Adams]

I am extremely grateful. The hon. Lady is sending a powerful message, but I want to take her back to her points about other heads of states who have come, because I am a bit confused. Many Members have mentioned some rather unsavoury figures who have been afforded state visits. Not so long ago we rolled out the red carpet for the Emir of Kuwait, which is a place where, if someone is gay, there is a pretty good chance they will be slung in prison. I wonder whether the hon. Lady thinks we are perhaps traipsing into an area of double standards.