Thank you James Mattis for avoiding World War III

We've known for a long time that Jim Mattis at the Pentagon was a bit of a rebel. If he didn't like what Trump was ordering him to do when he was defence secretary, he just plain didn't do it. Well now, according to insider details reported in The New Yorker, Mattis disobeyed presidential orders on numerous occasions. It was the instinctive all-action president versus the seasoned four-star commander who thought things out properly. So thank God for Jim Mattis who probably saved the US from diving into a World War III situation. It's one of the most remarkable aspects of Trump's presidency so far, that people like Mattis and John Kelly when he was White House chief of staff deliberately avoided carrying out specific Trump orders. Quite extraodinary. And a sackable offence. Well both Mattis and Kelly were effectively sacked because they had no choice but to resign. But they lasted a long time and managed successfully to restrain Trump from acting on his gut instincts. In 2017, apparently, according to the new report, Trump ordered Mattis to withdraw all families of US troops in South Korea because of North Korea's ballistic missile tests. That would no doubt have been interpreted by Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, as a signal that Trump was going to launch an attack on Pyongyang. Mattis got the order but put it in his trash tray. He made no phone call to the US commander in South Korea. He did nothing. So what hapened when Trump noticed nothing was going on in South Korea? Did he ring Mattis and say: "Hey, Mad Dog, what the hell is happening? I thought I said get those families out now!" Well, if he did, it has not been recorded. Either way, Mattis refused to carry out the order. Then also in 2017, Trump wanted a war meeting about North Korea at Camp David and expected Mattis to arrive with a long list of wonderful options for bombing North Korea to hell. Mattis, it is reported, ignored the request to send officials with their plans to the meeting which then didn't take place. Eventually of course Mattis received one order which he knew he couldn't ignore - start withdrawing US troops from Syria immediately - and as a result he promptly resigned. Trump must have been SO pleased because soon after Mattis had gone he started maligning him, saying he hadn't done a very good job. Mattis was replaced by his deputy Patrick Shanahan who is still after four months only acting defence secretary. I think it suits Trump very well to have an acting Pentagon chief because Shanahan is so eager to be nominated for the top job the president probably thinks he will do whatever he orders him to do, like send more and more troops to the Mexican border. What a carry-on.

Jeremy Hunt in subtle Tory leadership move

The Tory leadership battle in good old going-down-the-drain Britain is up and running even though it has not been launched and Theresa May is still esconsed in 10 Downing Street. The latest person to make an interesting move is Jeremy Hunt, the Foreign Secretary. He was at the now notorious National Security Council meeting down in the bunker beneath the Cabinet Office last Tuesday in which the government made a decision, or at last Theresa May made a decision, to let Huawei put its technology into the next-generation 5G telecommunications systems. The leak that has caused such a scandal elicited the interesting information that Hunt was among four ministers who opposed the Huawei decision. Now the very young-looking Foreign Secretary has come out in public to confirm that he is dubious about the Huawei decision. He has said that the government needs to be very cautious about allowing Huawei to provide its 5G technology because of the inextricable link between any Chinese company operating abroad and China's intelligence services. Under Chinese law, companies in China are obliged to work closely with the intelligence services. That means if the spy chiefs tell them to use their technology to eavesdrop on or penetrate Western security systems they MUST do so. Huawei says this is nonsense but I know it's true!! Hunt whose remit includes being accountable for the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) knows a thing or two about the intelligence world athough never the nitty-gritty operational details, and it's pretty clear MI6 bosses will have told him that Huawei is not to be trusted. The MI6 chief, Alex Younger, was also present at the leaked National Security Council meeting. Interestingly, when Younger appears at such Whitehall meetings he always wears a name tag which just has one letter on it - "C". The chief of MI6 is known in the service and everywhere in government as "C". "Hello, C", "Good morning, C". "How are you, C?" The head of MI6 has been known as C ever since the founding chief, Captain Sir Mansfield Cumming was spymaster. He was referred to as C after the first letter of his surname, and the letter stuck. So that is always Younger's name tag. Nice touch in my view! Anyway, Hunt will have had chats with C and so that's why he has made public his concerns. But it's also a smart leadership move. Hunt has got to be a front runner for Theresa May's job. Hunt by the way has fully recovered from his brief moment of sheer embarrassment when Jim Naughtie, then one of the leading BBC Radio 4 Today programme interviewers, got his h's and c's the wrong way round when he introduced him. Jeremy Hunt at that time was the Culture Secretary.

A second Brexit referendum is getting nearer and nearer

All the talk in Westminster is about another referendum on Brexit but this time it would be a confirmatory decision. In other words, the politicians have totally failed to make any decision, so it will be up to the people to decide and then the House of Commons will be obliged to follow it whatever it is. I have been against a second referendum on the grounds that it would just cause more confusion, more division and more uncertainty. I still think that. However, after the farce we have faced in recent weeks, with extensions to the Brexit deadline and absolutely no clear way forward, perhaps there is no other solution. As tabloid newspapers would say, it's make-or-break time. Nobody but the most ardent Brexiteer wants a no-deal Brexit. So there are only two questions left to be answered on a second referendum ballot paper: Do you want the Theresa May Brexit deal, softened by Labour demands, or do you want to revoke Article 50 and stay in the European Union? So it's not Remain or Leave as such. It's more nuanced but amounts to the same thing. If the majority go for the Brexit deal because they are so desperate to leave the EU - even more than they did in 2016 - then it's a sort of victory for Theresa May and she might be able to survive for another year. If the majority go for staying in the EU it's a defeat for May, even though she herself is and was a Remainer. She would have to resign for failing to deliver the 2016 referendum mandate as she promised she would. She goes, there's a bloodthirsty Tory leadership campaign with all the candidates, even Boris Johnson, promising to do their best to reform the EU from within. Boris could win. Then there will have to be a general election, the Tories get annihilated, Labour wins but on victory night Jeremy Corbyn is politically stabbed in the back and a more moderate, more acceptable figure steps forward to lead Labour and the government. Arise Sir Keir Starmer, shadow Brexit secretary and former director of public prosecutions. Corbyn pledges revolution but no one is listening. Could this all really happen? Yes it could.

Trump will never like the media. Good news or bad news?

Donald Trump just hates hates hates the media. That is never going to change which means that the majority of the big newspapers are going to be against him during the 2020 presidential campaign. In the UK that could spell disaster for the government seeking reelection. When Neil Kinnock, leader of the Labour Party, was looking good to win the general election in 1992, The Sun tabloid newspaper ran a front-page headline which read: "If Kinnock wins today will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights". This headline appeared on the day of the election. Kinnock, despite all the encouraging polls, was annihilated. The Sun undoubtedly played a major role. In Trump's case an adversarial press doesn't seem to make a difference to his chances of winning. In fact, just the opposite. His supporters love it that Trump attacks the media as the enemy of the people. It's one of Trump's big assets in their view. A hostile press boosts Trump's status. The more hostile the press is during the presidential election campaign the more it will help him to retain the White House job I suspect, unless they come up with something so devastating that not even he can deny it! Somehow I think that's unlikely because otherwise Robert Mueller and his team of lawyers would have found it. Now Trump has once again snubbed the invitation to attend the White House Correspondents' dinner, where it's traditional for the president to get some mocking treatment and then to answer back with some cutting but humerous quips. Obama did it rather well. But Trump can't do humour, and he so despises the media there's no way he's going to sit through a three-course dinner while people stand up to make fun of him. It's not Trump's style. Which is a shame for the White House reporters because it's the dinner they really look forward to. Without the president at the top table it's all rather boring.

Who leaked from the UK's National Security Council?

The secret decision by the National Security Council, headed by Theresa May, to allow the Chinese company Huawei to provide limited 5G technology for the next-generation of telecommunications systems in the UK despite cncerns about security risks, took place when the prime minister is facing losing her job, the country is in political turmoil over Brexit and tens of thousands of people are protesting about lack of action over climate change. This is why someone from that meeting on Tuesday leaked or arranged to be leaked key details from the ministerial debate to the Daily Telegraph. On the face of it is a scandalous breach of confidentiality. Not that I'm blaming the Daily Telegraph for publishing the story. I would have done exactly the same if someone from the secret meeting had whispered stuff to me. But the leaker broke the most golden of rules and by revealing all to the newspaper has put his or her personal interests before national interests. The heads of the three intelligence services, MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, must be spitting mad. How can they trust the National Security Council ever again? Its ministerial membership consisted of the prime minister, the Chancellor Philip Hammond, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, Home Secretary Sajid Javid, Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson, Trade Secretary Liam Fox, International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt, deputy prime minister David Lidington, Culture Secretary Jeremy Wright and Business Secretary Greg Clark. The officials were Sir Mark Sedwill, Cabinet Secretary, plus the three heads of the intelligence services, Alex Younger of MI6, Andrew Parker of MI5 and Jeremy Fleming of GCHQ. All the focus is on the ministers. The Cabinet Secretary would NEVER leak, nor would the heads of the intelligence services. They live by secrecy every day of their lives. Some of the ministers present have already denied leaking the Huawei decision which, by the way, still remains unconfirmed by the Government. But let's speculate a scenario. One of the ministers gets back to his/her office and has a chat with his/her special political adviser in total confidence about the National Security Council meeting. The special adviser advises that even though the meeting was held in secret it would be in the public interest for the decision to be aired in public because of the enormous security implications involved. And also, if it was leaked which ministers were opposed to the decision by Theresa May to approve Huawei's participation in the UK's future telecommunications systems it would boost the leadership potential of those ministers. Ergo, a nod and a wink and bingo a phone call is made to the Daily Telegraph. I have no proof any of this happened but I do know the way Whitehall functions from years of working as a journalist, and nods and winks are all part of the political game. Ministers can deny they were involved but.......

Kim and Putin in Vladivostok

There is nothing reassuring about Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin meeting for a summit in Vladivostok. Kim, roughly the same height as his Russian host but consideraby broader in the beam, is a clever chap, playing Donald Trump against Putin. A North Korean version of the opening Phillidor Swamp move in chess in which Black (Kim) sucks White (Trump) into a sticky mess that leads to checkmate. Kim chatting amiably to Putin and promising a closer relationship must have made Trump grit his teeth. Trump thought he was in the driving seat but no, there is his old mate Vlad whipping the carpet from under his feet. It's a tricky business, global politics, but Kim seems to handle it all pretty well. If he's not kowtowing to Xi Zinping he's hopping about in his armoured train plotting his next chess move. Putin was an obvious choice because of Trump's troubles with the hohoho Moscow collusion stuff and the last summit which was pretty disastrous. Hanoi will go down in history as the place where deals are never done. Since the Trump walk-out in Hanoi, Kim has basically won all the cards. He has ordered his nuclear boys to look snappy about rebuilding dismantled facilities, and fired off a fairly meaningless "new" tactical weapon to make the world tremble, although that didn't work very well because the new Pentagon chief spokesman somewhat bizarrely announced that the US military commands involved in monitoring threats to the US were carrying on as normal, with breakfast, lunch and tea all held at the usual time. Well he didn't say the last bit but he was rather ineptly trying to get across the message that the North Korean tactical weapon/missile hadn't made the earth move as far as the Pentagon was concerned. Then there was the charming announcement from Pyongyang that Mike Pompeo, the Kim-like shaped secretary of state, should be sacked as the chief US negotiator with North Korea because they don't like his gruff approach. They want someone sweet and smiling who will do the North Koreans' bidding. Trump should ignore that one. The trouble is if Pompeo stays as chief negotiator, Kim might refuse to see him or Trump and will just rely on his new best friend Vladimir Putin. I don't know whether Putin plays or understands the complexities of chess but he sure as hell knows when to make smart moves on the world stage. It's probably time Trump wrote another one of those "I love you" letters to Kim.

Tomorrow could be B for Biden day

Well we have all waited so long, it seems almost like an anti-climax that Joe Biden, apparently, is to declare his candidature tomorrow (Thursday April 25) for the Democratic nomination in the 2020 presidential election. Donald Trump, by some accounts, is more worried about facing Biden than anyone else because, despite his faults which have ben aired very publicly recently, Biden has huge experience in Congress, knows all about international security issues having been vice president to Obama and is generally thought of as a nice, cheery, sociable guy. The opposite to Trump in other words. A lot of people in the US must be aching for a president who is the opposite to Trump. Whether Biden is the man to oust Trump from the White House we shall see. Even if he wins the nomination I cannot see him trouncing Trump. Being a nice guy is not enough to be an effective president of the United States, although I'm sure it helps. No one views Trump as the sort of guy to spend a chatty evening with, except perhaps a few of his golfing chums. But Biden....well Biden never stops chatting once he gets going. A President Biden would be a massive relief to leaders around the world but, again, would Biden be the man to restore America's reputation AND make the rght decisions to sort this world out. I have my doubts which is why I have gone for a new face, a new voice, a new politician to be the one to take on Trump. Kamala Harris. She inspires me more than good old Joe. The touchy-feely reputation with women hasn't helped. Biden still hasn't apologised for his past over-warm embraces and a lingering uncertainty remains, certainly in the mind of the women who have come forward to complain of his hair-stroking and hair-sniffing etc. But the rumours in Washington are now rife that Biden is to make his announcement tomorrow and it will be the biggest non-surprise of the year. Some of his rivals for the Democratic nomination will not be too pleased. Perhaps notably Bernie Sanders, one year older than Biden, who will regard Joe as his most dangerous rival for the nomination. Bernie is an obsessive about policies and changing the face of America in favour of the poor and downtrodden. He is not a chatty sort of guy. So while their ages are similar - both will be grand old men by the time 2020 arrives - they are very dissimilar in most other ways. Joe will have his big day tomorrow and for several months he will be the favourite for the nomination. But watch out for the younger and more inspirational candidates. Some will fall by the wayside but others, like Kamala Harris and some of her male same-generation rivals, could surge ahead.

Impeach or not to impeach, that's the big question.

Of the TWENTY candidates lined up for the Democratic Party presidential nomination list, only two have so far come out in favour of impeaching Donald Trump. Elizabeth Warren and my favurite Kamala Harris, have made the big step, although I suspect neither thinks it would succeed. Impeachment of a US president is such a big deal and Republicans would fight to stop it at all costs. There are grounds for arguing that the Mueller report uncovered an unseemly mess at the White House, revealing a president willing to abuse the constitution and justice system. But the president of the United States does have huge executive powers and Trump would argue that everything he did to try and thwart the investigation into the alleged, and now dismissed, accusation of a conspiracy with Russia to keep Hillary Clinton out of the White House was because he was Innocent OK and therefore had a right to shout and scream about a witchhunt. That's basically the argument put forward by William Barr, the attorney general. Not exactly a legal judgment but a personal explanation on behalf of the man who appointed him. So are Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris unwise to put their foot into the impeachment pool? Well, I guess it's quite courageous because they don't have the support of the whole Democratic Party and they certainly don't have the backing of Nancy Pelosi who is as shrewd as they come. She realises that a push for impeachment just might go against the Democrats and screw up their chances of defeating Trump in 2020. Far better, Pelosi thinks, to attack Trump on the basis of the findings of the Mueller report but without going the whole hog and putting the president in the dock. I think Pelosi is right. Impeachment would be so divisive it would unite the Republicans and possibly the voters to turn against the Democratic presidential candidates. But Warren and Harris in their wisdom have decided to go for it. We will see whether it works against them in the next few months. Of course we're still waiting for Joe Biden to announce his candidature and if he does, will he perhaps call for impeachment of Trump? I doubt it. He's going to play safe. I can see Warren and Harris probably backing away from their current position on impeaching Trump. But they have both made a stand and it will show to voters that they are not afraid of making tough decisions. That can't be bad in the long term.

Politics is now officially funny haha.

The election of a television comedian to be president of Ukraine has opened the door to a new era of leadership candidates. There might be some who would argue that the United States already has a comedian in charge at the White House. But I have to say Trump has never made me laugh. But this new guy in Ukraine is a bundle of laughs, a very slick comic who will no doubt come up with some terrific jokes to help run his country. Volodymyr Zelenskiy wants to be close to Vladimir Putin. Good news for Putin, bad news for Ukraine. But perhaps Zelenskiy was joking when he said that haha! It's going to be a tricky time, trying to decide whether the new Ukrainian president is being serious or laughable. Actually that's pretty like a lot of politicians these days. Well good luck to him I say. His predecessor, Petro Poroshenko, was old-school, pretty grim and by all accounts suspected of being not funny at all. So a comedian in charge in Kiev will bring a little light to the lives of the poor Ukrainians who have suffered from semi-occupation by Russian troops dressed as non-Russian troops - the Little Green Men as they are called because of their green I'm-not-a-Russian-ho-ho-ho uniforms. What's the presidential comedian going to do about them? Do a deal with Putin? Zelenskiy is not alone in having an interesting background before becoming the leader of his country. George Weah, president of Liberia, was a very talented footballer and played for, among others, Monaco, AC Milan, Chelsea and Manchester City. Ronald Reagan was a movie star, and Putin was a lieutenant-colonel of the KGB. He never made it to full colonel which must have made him very very angry, angry enough to become president in order to blow raspberries at everyone. Possibly we in the UK now need a comedian to take over the reins of power. My favourite commedians are Paul Whitehouse of Fast Show fame, Lee Evans, manically funny, and Jack Dee with his deadpan delivery. I'm going to start a campaign!

So what about the infamous Christopher Steele dossier on Trump?

There are some things which the Robert Mueller report has not resolved. One of the most controversial series of allegations against Donald Trump appeared in the notorious dossier drawn up by Christopher Steele, the former British MI6 intelligence officer. Apart from multiple allegations about Trump's business dealings in Moscow before he became president there was the extraordinary claim that the Russians had compromising photos of Trump cavorting with prostitutes in a hotel room in the Russian capital during a visit in 2013. The infamous Golden Shower moment, when, it was alleged, Trump was caught being urinated on by two prostitutes. To be honest I always thought this bit in the Steele dossier was so obviously Russian black propaganda that it seemed amazing to me that someone with Steele's experience and intelligence should have felt it merited including in his backgound, highly detailed, dossier on Trump. Trump himself dismissed the accusation as fake news and revealed to the world that it couldn't have happened as he suffered from germ phobia. In other words he could not have stomached being urinated on. But the fact is the Steele dossier which ended up in the hands of the late John McCain who passed it to the FBI, was a major factor in the whole Russia collusion story. Yet Mueller hardly mentions it in his report. So does that mean he believes the former MI6 officer who served in Moscow had been duped by his Russian sources? And therefore it was not worth focusing on? The alleged Golden Shower episode would only have been relevant if it was part of the jigsaw showing that Trump was in league with Moscow in winning the 2016 election. But Mueller has stated that there is no evidence that there was any collusion between Moscow and the Trump campaign, despite numerous meetings and contacts between Russians and campaign team members, including of course, Trump's son and son-in-law. So the Steele dossier was rubbish, a concoction of fabrications put out by dubious Russian intelligence contacts of the former MI6 former?? We probably will never know.

Has the Mueller report fatally damaged Trump?

From the mass of detailed reaction to the Mueller report, not just from the Democrats but also from legal and constitutional experts, it is probably accurate to say that the Trump presidency may now be fatally and irreversibly damaged, if not crippled. There are so many still unanswered questions and suspicions and doubts. So many people inside the White House have been caught lying that it is impossible for the likes of us to know any longer what the truth is. Francis Bacon, the complex and bizarre British artist, once said that the only way to understand the truth was to view it through a distorted lens, or words to that effect. As a consequence of this view he painted figures that were a mass of distortions and twists and impenetrable images. Is that the truth we now have with the Mueller report and Trump's White House? Will we ever learn the real truth? And even if we do, won't Trump and co just dismiss it as fiction. Look at Trump's main spokesperson, Sarah Huckerbee Sanders. She told the media at the time that the president's sacking of James Comey, then FBI director, was because "countless" FBI agents were disillusioned with his leadership and were suffering from low morale. The real reason, as Trump himself admitted in a TV interview soon after her statement to the press, was that he sacked Comey because of the original Russia collusion investigation. Now Sarah Sanders, with not a glimmer of embarrassment, explains that she sort of mispoke at the time about using the word "countless" but still insists morale was bad at the FBI under Comey. She has probably got a neighour who used to work at the FBI who told her over the garden fence that he had heard through one of his mates that Comey wasn't that popular!!! Ha, thus emerged the "countless" adjective. I seriously doubt Sarah Whatsit knows countless FBI agents. But she has some gall now after the Mueller report to stick to her original story about the sacking of Comey. We all know, thanks to Trump, that he got fed up with Comey because he insisted on investigating whether the White House had been engaged in a nefarious plot with the Russians to destroy Hillary Clinton's election campaign. This was before Mueller of course. So the whole truth about the whole truth is more about mirrors and perceptions and interpretations. BUT, people with any brain cells are not stupid. They will make up their minds about Trump as president in 2020. Do they trust him to be in charge of the country for another four years or has the Mueller affair totally changed their view? I don't know the answer but I'm pretty sure, despite Trump's insistence he has been completely exonerated, that his presidency has been tarnished and there could be a huge upset in 2020. An upset for Trump I mean.

The dirt is in the Mueller report detail

Such a wealth of detail has emerged from the Robert Mueller report. One of the extraordinary things is how much Mueller has confirmed the reports of a crazy White House outlined in numerous books since Donald Trump became president. Especially the blockbusters produced by Michael Wolff in Fire and Fury and Bob Woodward in Fear: Trump in the White House. They both inteviewed huge numbers of insiders, all of whom said the White House was chaotic. Mueller has kindly added to this impression by detailing how often key officials have just disobeyed the president in order to avoid having to implement his decisions. Trump comes up with a wild idea like: "Sack Robert Mueller". But the official delegated to carry it out just ignored the president, knowing that it was a really bad idea! What I can't understand is, how come Trump didn't go ballistic when his orders were plainly ignored. Well he probably did go ballistic but someone must have calmed him down. Perhaps General John Kelly when he was chief of staff played this vital role. But my God there must have been some spectacular scenes in the Oval Office where all of this was going on. Wolff and Woodward revealed quite a lot but I think there is another blockbuster to be written which spells it all out even more clearly. By the way, I notice, thanks to Mueller, that Trump is quite keen on four-letter words. Mind you, even the cool dude Obama resorted to four-letter words on occasions. More books please.

The Mueller Report - again!

I haven't yet read the redacted Mueller Report but I'm sure, as a long-time journalist, there will be numerous little paragraphs or footnotes that will leap out as potential stories. That's always the way with reports. The trick as a journalist is to hunt for things that no one officially has actually mentioned. Apart from footnotes, there are also the extra bits at the end that normally no one would bother with, like addenda and sources etc. But overall, I doubt even The New York Times will uncover something so devastating that it will overturn the official line which is that Trump and his campaign team were not guilty of colluding with the Russians. After all, if the attorney general, William Barr, had lied when he said Mueller had found no evidence of collusion, Mueller himself would have said something and we would all have realised the real truth when we started to read the report. So, whether you trust or like Barr or not, the no-collusion conclusion stays. Much more interesting will be the obstruction stuff. Barr says there is insufficient evidence of Trump obstructing justice, just evidence of the president being angry about the accusations which he says was understandable. During his press conference today, Barr rather delightfully, when asked whether Mueller agreed with his judgment that there was insufficient evidence of a crime of obstruction, said he had heard "second hand" that the special counsel agreed with his conclusion and said Barr had the right to make this sort of decision. Who was the "second hand"? The Democrats have made a huge fuss about Barr holding a press conference at all prior to the publication of the redacted Mueller Report. Sorry but that is daft. Every government I can think of would have done the same, trying, in other words, to underline the message that Trump has been cleared. It's not a question of spinning a line. The journalists reading the report will make up their own minds whatever Barr said at the press conference. And anyway, it's helpful to have a few quotes from the attorney general to throw into the story. So now we await the thousands of words that will come from the journalists assigned to gut the report. The most imaginative will try to speculate on what was redacted. The best-informed will tap their contacts in the Mueller team of lawyers and find out what HAS been redacted!

Trump knows how to put out fires

It's just the way he is, but Donald Trump couldn't resist offering advice on how to fight the terrible fire that has done such appalling damage to the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris. He tweeted for the benefit of the French firefighters, "Why don't you try water tankers?" In other words, fly over the cathedral and smother the fire from above. Sitting in the White House, Trump thought he had the answer to save the medieval spire which finally collapsed. Well I don't know anything about firefighting techniques, apart from the obvious, but I reckon a deluge of water from a flyng tanker would probably have caused more damage to the roof and structure because of the huge weight of the downpour. Trump just thought, not for the first time, that he knew more about firefighting than the guys on the ground in Paris. He did the same when forest fires were burning in California. He also told Theresa May how to sort out Brexit. He has an answer to everything. If only he was right every time, the world might feel grateful. But on the whole the US president shoots from the hip and out comes his special sort of wisdom. I doubt the French firefighters struggling to save Notre Dame thought to themselves, "Oh my God, that man is right. Send for the water tankers."

Why is Trump refusing to publish his tax returns?

Donald Trump hates the idea of havng his tax returns made public and he and his accountants continue to stall over Democrat demands that he comes clean. The usual excuse is that Trump's finances are still being audited. I don't know whether American voters care one way or the other about his taxes but there must be some who are curious about whether he has paid any taxes at all which, being a billionaire, could mightily annoy those people who work hard all their lives and pay their taxes like dutiful citizens. Surely he must have paid some taxes over the years, even if his accountants have found dodgy but lawful ways of paying the minimum. As president he should demonstrate that he has met his tax oblgations like any other decent American. But there has got to be something murky in the Trump tax history. Otherwise he would have published them a long time ago. I thought US presidents were supposed to reveal all about everything. If they sneeze, the nation is supposed to hear about it. This is what happens with the Queen of England. The slightest hint of a cold or cough and we Brits get to know about it through Buckingham Palace spokespersons. And we know all about her taxes and investments and annual cost to taxpayers. But Trump wants to keep his business stuff separate from his presidential stuff. I say again, come clear Mr President because if you don't, the Democrats are going to make a song and dance about it all the way to the presidential election in 2020. Many of the Democratic presidential hopefuls have already published their taxes. Senator Kamala Harris is the latest to do so. She and her husband paid over $2.2 million in taxes in the last five years. Beng transparent seems to me to be better than looking and sounding shifty which is the case with Trump and his financial dealings. Voters should be told what their president has been up to in the past. But will Trump come clean? I doubt it.

Could Jeremy Corbyn become prime minister?

Thanks to the internal war that has been going on over Brexit in the Conservative Party for three years, I am beginning to think that not only will Theresa May lose her job soon but her government will lose power and Jeremy Corbyn will win the next election because the country will by then be so sick of the Conservatives they will turn to the only alternative. Labour will be back in power. It's an extraordinary and disastrous failure by the Conservatives. They have failed to negotiate an acceptable deal to leave the European Union and as a result have opened the door for a committed Marxist to take the reigns of power. For the first time since this Brexit fiasco began I am seriously worried about the future of my country. Jeremy Corbyn in Downing Street is an unbelievably scary thought. Thank you David Cameron for setting this path to disaster when you agreed to hold a referendum on staying in or leaving the EU. History will show that this was one of the worst political decisions taken by a British prime minister in modern times.

Julian Assange gets his just deserts.

Julian Assange, co-founder of Wikileaks, is regarded either as a hero of free speech or a villain. He played a leading part in publicising hundreds of thousands of classified US documents handed over to Wikileaks by Private Bradley Manning, now Chelsea Manning when he was serving in the military at a base west of Baghdad during the height of the Iraqi insurgency war. It was a gross betrayal by Manning who served prison time for his crimes, and Assange, through his complicity in the exposure of these secrets, is also guilty in the eyes of the US authorities of the crime of espionage. Jjournalists who benefited from this breach of secrecy, wrote scandalised stories that filled newspapers for years. Now that Assange has been carried out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London by Metropolitan police officers after living in the embassy for seven years as an asylum seeker, he is facing extradition to the US, trial and possible conviction for crimes meriting seven or more years in jail. Do I feel sympathy for Assange? Do I believe he is a hero that should win the Nobel prize for something or other? No to both questions in my view. I think the US has every right to put him on trial. He may be acquitted if he has a good defence lawyer who emphasises that he is just a journalist doing his job. Which is fine. But I have never seen Assange as a regular journalist. And I certainly don't see him as a hero. In the same way I never viewed Edward Snowden as a hero. He betrayed his employers at the National Security Agency, broke the trust the NSA had placed in him and ran away to Moscow of all places when the NSA secrets he had stolen were delivered to the Guardian newspaper in a hotel room in Hong Kong. Snowden was more of a traitor in that sense than Assange ever was. But the only way to decide once and for all whether either of these men were heroes or traitors is to put them on trial and let the jury decide. Assange, if extradited to the US, will be the first one for the courts to decide this issue. Snowden will probably spend the rest of his days in Moscow. Good riddance I say.

Theresa May could be facing her last Easter as prime minister

Theresa May loves going on walking holidays. If she is planning a week off in July or August to walk in Italy, I fear she will do so without the trappings of being prime minister. For months experts have been saying that May's last days were approaching and yet somehow she held off her rivals and kept going, obstinately refusing to consider handing over the Brexit chalice to someone else. But now that she has persuaded the EU to postpone Brexit for a second time - giving her another six months of what will probably prove to be fruitless discussions in cabinet, with the opposition, and in parliament - I just don't see how she can survive that long. She always promised two things: that the UK would leave the EU on March 29, whatever.... and that the UK would NOT take part in the next round of European parliamentary elections, which are due to take place on May 23. She failed with the March 29 deadline and now she has failed with the European elections issue. The UK is obliged by European law to take part in the EU parliamentary elections if we are stil part of the European family at the time of the elections. Which we will be unless there is a miracle. And no one any longer believes in a Brexit miracle. With the six months' grace permitted by the 27 EU governments, the high-ups in the Conservative pary will be thinking, "Right, now is the time for a new leader, a new momentum, a new way and a new future." I don't think Theresa May will bow out gracefully. Why should she? She has done all the hard work. But the way things are going, there is no hope in hell of May and Jeremy Corbyn forging a deal together and Theresa has upset so many in her party, let alone in the cabinet, that it's almost impossible to envisage her staying in Number 10 Downing Street for much longer. I fear the knives will be out and getting sharpened as I write. Watch your back, Theresa!

Delay delay and more Brexit delay

The Brexit drama is no longer a drama. It's a farce. A good old-fashioned joke-a-minute slapstick comedy in which all the actors have long noses, big funny ears and never seem to know what is going on. Red-line Theresa May has gone colour-blind and has lost the plot. Every time she fails to get agreement on her deal she just hops over to Europe and asks for an extension. After all she has only had three years to get to the point we are today. Which is where exactly? Will it make any difference whether we get another couple of months or another couple of years? The longer the extension surely the less likely it will be that we will get a deal because it will give all the MPs even more time to come up with ideas that simply won't wash. It's like the mad hatter's tea party. Common sense has gone out of the window. Delay and more delay will cause even more confusion and people who own companies will not know what to do about planning for the future. It's time, ladies and gentlemen, to come together and make a decision in the best interests of our country. Simple really, except that no one any longer knows what is best for this country. David Cameron, architect of the chaos we are now in has vanished. He is the dormouse asleep in the teapot in the mad hatter's tea party. I don't know what role Theresa May is playing any longer. She certainly isn't Alice. But she is definitely in Wonderland.

Trump flexes his muscles

There are times when the president of the United States just waves a big stick and gets things done, never mind what his advisers say. Donald Trump has always been like that but this week he really has been busy. He sacked his director of homeland security, chopped the director of the Secret Service and designated Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organisation. Poor Kirstjen Nielsen knew her job was on the line. She has been living by her fingertips ever since her main backer, General John Kelly, left his job as chief of staff at the White House. She did her best to look and sound tough on immigration but she was never going to be tough enough with a man like Trump as her boss. So off she goes to new pastures and now homeland security is going to be turned upside down so that all the top people are Trumpites, tough as hell on immigration and born-again Wall builders. It was inevitable. Bye bye Kirstjen. The Secret Servce has lost a few directors in its time. The one sacked this time, Randolph Alles, hasn't exactly been a star of the show. As for designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terror oganisation, that has been a long time coming. Trump hates them, and for good reason. This nasty bunch of schemers and plotters does all the dirty work for the Tehran regime. Strangely, the Pentagon advsed Trump against designating them terrorists on the grounds that it would put US troops stationed in the Middle East in grave danger. Well, US troops stationed and serving in the Middle East are already in grave danger. That's their job. I don't think calling the Revolutionary Guard terrorists will change that. So it's only Tuesday Mr President, what else do you have planned for this week?

May's Brexit customs union solution will never work

Theresa May desperately wants Boris Johnson on side to push her Brexit deal through Parliament by April 12. That's just four days away. But the only thing she has come up with is to add the customs union to her old old deal which has been rejected twice, and then sort of a third time. Boris is having none of it. Being a firm Leaver, Boris thinks staying in the EU customs union is a betrayal of the mandate demanded by the majority of those who took part in the 2016 referendum. He's probably right. So why is Theresa May now a convert to the customs union idea? Well it's simple, it's the only idea which Jeremy Corbyn has come up with during his talks with Theresa May. She doesn't want to add the customs union to her Brexit deal but she has little choice if she wants to get Labour to support her Brexit solution. But without Boris Johnson's approval I don't think Theresa has a hope in hell of getting Parliament to approve her Brexit formula. So what is the point of it all? Theresa is living in a world of her own. She is going to be defeated again which means that when April 12 comes along there will be no agreement. So Britain will crash out without a deal. This is exactly what Boris wants, and all the other Brexiteers who think that a no-deal Brexit is a great idea, never mind the warnings of economic collapse. If no-deal Brexit is now the most likely outcome after three years, then Theresa May will fall, and someone like Boris will replace her. I never never thought this would happen but now I'm pretty sure that this is exactly what IS going to happen. Crashing out of the EU and Boris in charge. All I can say is, at least Jeremy Corbyn won't be in Downing Street.

Macron has taken on the "Non" mantle of de Gaulle

General Charles de Gaulle was notorious for saying "non" when he disagreed with something, which was often the case. Now President Emmanuel Macron has become the Non man of Europe when asked about Britain's struggle to agree a Brexit plan. Theresa May wants yet another extension to Article 50 to try and try again to get an agreement through Parliament. But Macron has replied, "Non, madam, what iz zee point if you 'ave no plan." Well he may only be about 22 but I suppose he's right. What iz zee point if Theresa May has no hope of forging a deal with the opposition before April 12? Donald Tusk, the less than charismatic president of the European Council is happy to extend and extend and extend, perhaps for years, in the hope that the British will give up the ghost and just cave in and say, "Oh sod it, we'll stay in the EU". But Macron is a realist and also a hardline European.He wants the EU to be big and strong and unforgiving and let the British hang themselves. Well thanks Monsieur Le President, we saved your bacon in the Second World War, don't forget, and if it wasn't for us and the Americans and Canadians and others, you wouldn't be president of La France today. I know we can't go on and on about saving zee French from Nazi occupation. But we don't take too kindly to Macron being a right old goat about our Brexit problem. So M Macron, a little more understanding and sympathy and patience, if you please.

Trump takes the mickey out of Biden

It takes some gall for Donald Trump to take the mickey out of Joe Biden over his women troubles. Trump has a terrible reputation with women. Notoriousy he was reported to have made highy sexist remarks about women in a conversation with some of his male friends. I won't repeat the exact wording becasuse it was pretty disgusting but it had something to do with grabbing certain parts of a woman. Then of course there were his alleged extramarital sessions with two exotic women. But now with Joe Biden under scrutiny for being too close and creepy with a number of women in the past, Trump has leapt in with mocking remarks about the former vice president. Anyone with any reputation for misrespecting women would normally keep quiet but not Trump. He is so confident that he is the best individual on God's earth that he just weighs in to add his bit as poor Biden suffers daily allegations. Trump aside, the queue of women now coming forward to recount their experiences of Biden's touchy feely moments must make Obama's former VP think twice before running for president. If he decides to run for the Democratic Pary nomination, every photographer in the land is going to be following him to see if they can catch him out holding a woman's hand too long or kissing the back of a woman's head - one of his favourite touches it seems - and suddenly the newspapers will be full of it. Biden has promised to give women more space. That's fine but the moment he forgets himself and gets snapped by a photographer, he will regret ever declaring to run. It will also give Trump more ammunition to take the mickey out of his rival for the White House.

May and Corbyn are doomed to fail

Nothing good will come from the Theresa May/Jeremy Corbyn discussions about Brexit. They are ideologically miles apart, they want different things, they don't like each other and Corbyn wants her job. So how on earth did Theresa think it was a good idea to bring Corbyn into the mix? Not that long ago Corbyn was a nobody, some crazy man on the left of the Labour Party who spent his time being a pain in the neck in the House of Commons, denouncing everything that didn't have a Karl Marx label on it. Then by some extraordinary quirk of fate he became the leader of the Labour Party much to everyone's total astonishment. Well by that I mean the whole of the British establishment. The younger members of the Labour Party liked him and thought he was a breath of fresh air. Well they go that wrong. This man is steeped in the most radical politics, a leader who wants to take Britain back to the good old days of powerhouse trade unions. Now here he is sitting opposite Theresa May at Number 10 Downing Street trying to impose his views on the prime minister. I bet even he can hardly believe it. It's such an extraordinary story that I can see the whole of the cabinet resigning in fury. So will the May/Corbyn achieve what nothing else has so far: a Brexit deal acceptable to everyone? Absolutely no way. We are all doomed.

Theresa May gets into bed with Corbyn

I suppose it was inevitable. Having failed with her red-lines Brexit deal which she thought was what Leave voters had demanded, Theresa May is now turning to the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, a Marxist, to bash out a new way forward which will have one result and one result only, a much softer Brexit. It will mean that the UK will be so closely linked to the EU that no one will notice the difference from the state of play today. So after three years in which she has said that she would never accept an exit deal that would involve staying in the EU single market or customs union, that's pretty well what will emerge from a May/Corbyn get-together. It represents a total about-face by the prime minister. When Maggie Thatcher was prime minister she famously said "This lady (ie her) is not for turning". Well Theresa May, the second UK female prime minister, IS for turning. In fact she is for turning and twisting and dancing round in circles. No wonder the cabinet is screaming at her. I can envisage some serious cabinet resignations. The Leavers in her cabinet will be totally against teaming up with Corbyn for any deal, let alone one involving the future status of Britain in the world. And what will the Northern Irish DUP say about it all? Do they want to maintain an intimate relationship with the EU? Well being in the customs union will solve the border issue and rid the deal of the wretched Irish backstop insurance problem aimed at preventing border checks. But I thought the DUP wanted to leave the EU. And the 17 million who voted to leave certainly intended the UK to scrap both the single market and the customs union. So what about them, Mrs May? Getting into bed with Jeremy Corbyn may sound like sensible, practical politics but this is not what Theresa May has been planning ever since she started this Brexit journey. It's a case of desperation. The end result will be May's already rejected Brexit deal plus Corbyn's demands attached. It's what we in Blighty call a bugger's muddle.

Ten days left for Britain's future

Britain's future has been thrown up in the air and kicked around for weeks by an increasingly divided House of Commons. I think it has now got to the point where it will be impossible for enough MPs to agree on the way forward. There is too much disagreement, too much anger and too much frustration. So what can be done? The cabinet has been going over this question again and again and they can't decide either. Almost all the options are bad news: a snap general election, a second referendum, an extension of Article 50 by one or two years, a no-deal Brexit, all of these alternatives will have unpleasant side effects. Theresa May doesn't seem to have a clue what to do next, nor do her ministers. There is only one solution. Article 50 must be revoked for a period of, say, ten years. It will cause fury amongst the 17 million people who voted to leave the EU. But it's time for political leaders to admit that this experiment in democracy has failed totally. Britain must remain in the EU for the next ten years and then, if there is any appetite for another go at leaving, then the government of the day must have a blueprint all ready to explain to the people. But this time there cannot be a referendum. The decision at that point should be the basis for a general election. But no election now.

Democratic candidates support Biden's accuser

Oh my goodness, politics really is a dirty game. Poor old Joe Biden, struggling to convince everyone that he has never acted inappropriately towards women, might have hoped that fellow Democrats going for president would be supportive towards him. If for no other reason than the old adage "there but for the grace of God". But no, Democratic presidential candidates, such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and Julian Castro, have all come out and said they believed the allegation made by Lucy Flores. They obviously decded that it was in their best political interest to support the accusing woman than offer sympathy or loyalty towards their colleague. And of course their support for Flores might just screw up Biden's chances of entering the race. Who'd be a politician? Loyalty is such a rare beast. Biden has found himself on his own. Apart from the rather timid expanation by Ash Carter's wife that she didn't mind when Biden put his hands on her shoulders whie standng behind her and seemed to be nuzzling her ear. A photograph of the incident has gone viral. Ash Carter, former US defence secretary under Obama, was being sworn in as Pentagon chief when his wife found herself being cosied up to by Biden, then vice president. She said the photo was misleading and claimed she had been comforted not discomforted by his hands and close ear nuzzling. She and her husband had known Biden for many years. Now picture editors of every newspaper are going to be hunting through thousands of pictures to see if they can find Biden doing anything similar to any other woman in the last 40 years. Yes, politics is a dirty business, and right now, however many times Biden denies acting inappropriately in the past, the allegations are bound to stick. That's the way it is, and his Democratic rivals will be quietly smiling to themselves because a presidential campaign without Biden as a contender will make life easier for them.