From Bercow to Corbyn, Trump’s UK visit has exposed a nest of political hypocrites

No sooner had the announcement been made that President Donald Trump would be making a state visit to the UK in June than a predictable flurry of criticism emerged from a group of the usual suspects.

Leading this crowd of dissenters who have said that they will refuse to attend a state dinner with our honoured guest were a curious trio: Sir Vince Cable, John Bercow, and Jeremy Corbyn – representing, in turn, irrelevance, self-promotion, and hypocrisy of the first order.

It is nobody’s fault if they have forgotten who or what Sir Vince represents in British politics. So abject has been his failure to break through electorally at a time when Brexit has dominated debate, when his is the only party unequivocally backing Remain, that even he has recognised it.

He will shortly be resigning and disappearing into the political ether, in what will hopefully be a long and happy retirement.

In contrast, the man Cable has slighted is only three years younger than him and – on current trends – likely to win a second term as the most powerful political leader in the world. It is safe to say that Trump will not lose much sleep about missing out on the pleasure of dining with Sir Vince, if indeed he knows who he is.

Bercow is in a different category. The speaker of the House of Commons enjoys some fame in the US, owing to his outlandish displays while chairing an often unruly House of Commons. The fact that he has launched a thousand Youtube “order, order” moments has, however, had the unfortunate effect of encouraging him to exaggerate his own importance.

This may just about be bearable in matters of House of Commons procedure, where he most recently derailed Theresa May’s Brexit plans by citing precedent dating from 1604 in justifying his intervention in trying to prevent a vote.

But does anyone outside of the Bercow household believe that the speaker has any meaningful role to play in foreign policy by dictating which of Britain’s allies should be allowed to speak to parliamentarians?

This is certainly not the view of Bercow’s House of Lords equivalent, the lord speaker. The mild-mannered Lord Fowler was so appalled by Bercow’s reiteration that he would not permit Trump to address parliament that he has accused him of dishonouring the memory of US war dead.

For the President is visiting Europe to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings, and this shared Anglo-American endeavour would surely have been the basis for any parliamentary comments.

Americans gave their lives to help liberate Europe from Nazi tyranny. Their sacrifice should be honoured through an address by their current President, not impugned by an insult to him.

Seeing as Bercow has previously played host to China’s despotic President Xi Jinping – an autocrat guilty of presiding over massive human rights violations – during his speakership, his intervention here is not only offensive, but inexplicable.

Which brings us to the final and most troubling case: that of Corbyn.

The leader of the opposition cited as part of his reasoning for declining dinner with the President that Trump “uses racist and misogynist rhetoric”, and should therefore not have been invited on a state visit.

Yet this is the same Corbyn who infamously described the racist terrorist organisations Hamas and Hezbollah as “friends” in 2009, and who has publicly supported extremists of various kinds, ranging from the IRA to Palestinian hate cleric Raed Salah.

It is also the same Corbyn who has presided over the worst antisemitism crisis in any political party in the UK’s history, with repeated instances of Labour members’ hostility to Jews played down or excused under his leadership – apparently at times with his office’s complicity.

It is also the very same Corbyn who has in the past carried a wreath at the graves of Palestinian murderers of Jews, endorsed an antisemitic mural, and written a foreword to John Hobson’s Imperialism: A Study – which contained gems about the “control” of the “policy of nations” exerted “by men of a single and peculiar race, who have behind them many centuries of financial experience” – all the while claiming that he didn’t know what he was doing.

All this leads to the inescapable conclusion that if Corbyn is happy to boycott Trump’s dinner on such grounds, he is essentially stating that he himself is unfit to be Britain’s Prime Minister, given his own long litany of offences against decency in the same vein.

The British electorate may wish to ponder this when the next opportunity comes to test this hypothesis.

President Trump is the leader of our closest ally, of a country with which we have a historic relationship that we presumably would like to nurture further. It is perfectly possible to salute the rank even if you dislike the man.

He should be welcomed with open arms and accorded the respect that his position – and our understanding of the centrality of the US to the vitality of the free world – deserves.