Theresa under constant attack

I don't know Theresa May personally, but I really do wish she could summon up the courage to order her ministers to shut up, get on with their job and stop plotting behind her back. What's wrong with these people, ministers and backbench MPs? They are all in the same political party but they seem to spend most of their time trying to make the Conservatives look like a bunch of backbiting, sniping, ungrateful, schoolboyish, pathetic idiots who would prefer to see Theresa May ousted at all costs whether it brings Jeremy Corbyn into Number 10 or not. How stupid is that? I have actually heard of Tories talking about the Corbyn nuclear option: let Labour win and after a year or two of a disastrous Corbyn government, there would be an election and the Conservatives would win an overwhelming majority under a New Leader. People who think like this should get out of Westminster more often and experience the real world. If Corbyn were ever to win, he might just survive and then how foolish would the Tory plotters look? As for a New Tory Leader, there isn't a single person currently in government who would make a better prime minister. That's not to say that Theresa is perfect, she is not. But none of her potential rivals would be any better, and most of them would be worse. So, you revolting (as in rebelling) Tory MPs, get with it and start backing Theresa to the hilt and boost her confidence a little. As of now, wherever she is, whether in Westminister or in Beijing, as she is currently, she has to fend off questions about her suitability to remain as prime minister. Leave her alone, she seems determined to stay as long as she can, and after all she has been through she should be allowed to pursue her intention of getting the best Brexit deal possible without having disloyal Tories whispering murder and mayhem behind her back to the parliamentary lobby journalists who sweep up every spittal and rumour and splash it all over the front pages. No disloyalty on my part towards my estimable colleagues. That's their job. But it wouldn't be so easy for them if there weren't so many Tory MPs around ready to spread the dirt. Apart from anything else I am tired of reading splash after splash about how Theresa May could be forced to step down in May or October, or before Brexit or after Brexit or.....Then what? Prime Minister Boris or Prime Minister Gove or Prime Minister Gavin Williamson or Prime Minister Jacob Rees-Mogg or Prime Minister David Davis? Or, of course, Prime Minister Jeremy Corbyn? Stick with it, Theresa, just be a bit tougher and tell all these would-be prime ministers to toe the line and keep their mouths shut. That would also send a message to the EU negotiators that Theresa IS in charge after all and force them to do a proper deal beneficial for all of us on either side of the English Channel.

Trump in full flow

The White House has already put out a flyer about Trump's State of the Union address in Congress later today. It sounds like all the same stuff he imparted to Piers Morgan on ITV at the weekend, all about how wonderful everything is. Now I don't blame the president at all for wanting to get across a positive message, in fact he would be an idiot to make a speech about how all the things that have gone wrong in the White House since he took over 12 months and ten days ago. So tonight it will be all about the booming economy, his plan to build up the military and his strategy on immigration. Oh, and how he's going to spend $1 trillion - why is it always $1 trillion dollars? Perhaps because it's such a great throwaway line - on America's deteriorating infrastructure. If anyone watched Piers Morgan's softly softly interview with his old Apprentice mate, Donald, at the weekend, they will know that Trump thinks everything is going swimmingly well. When asked for his views on the UK, he just replied that he loved Britain, loved Scotland even more, loved his Turnberry golf course, and was sure everyone in Britain loved him. But what about Jeremy Corbyn who has vowed to lead protests against him if he visits Britain, Morgan asked? "I don't know him," Trump replied. Actually, that's a terrific response. Who knows or wants to know Jeremy Corbyn? But Morgan left it at that. Trump and Morgan spent the 45 minutes chatting to each other with their knees almost touching. They must have chosen the smallest room in the building to hold the interview because it was definitely kneesie kneesie. Trump came up with his now familiar refrain, that he is the least racist person on God's earth and loves women. But was he a feminist, Morgan daringly asked? "No," replied Trump. So on the basis of the illuminating responses to "Piers", as Trump called him throughout, I think Congress is due to get a long list of wonderful, beautiful achievements completed in the first 12 months and the wonderful, beautiful projects and policies he has up his sleeve for the next 12 months. Oh I nearly forgot, one of the unbelievable revelations we got from the Piers Morgan exclusive interview was that Trump's first tweet of the day is generally written while he is still under the duvet in his pyjamas! Wow, hold the front page!! (ed. I thought we knew that!!)

Hillary and the Grammy sketch

I was intending to be critical of Hillary Clinton for appearing in the Grammy sketch last night, reading an excerpt from Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff, along with some hot-shot high-profile showbiz dudes. I mean, Hillary, has it come to this, you lost the presidency and now you have sunk so low you join the "let's take the p... out of Trump brigade" and boost the book sales for Michael Wolff. Judging by the excerpts read out at the Grammy awards evening, the writing is pretty atrocious, no style at all and rather predictable. But hey, having girded my loins to point out to Hillary that this sort of public behaviour should be beneath her, I then watched the sketch on my laptop this morning. And in her briefest of cameo roles, she was sensational. The familiar Hillary voice but slightly softer, and then an election-winning smile when she joked with James Corden, the Grammys host, about her winning the Grammy award for reading from a book. She reminded me of the Hillary Clinton who turned up at the Pentagon for a farewell in 2013 before she stepped down as secretary of state to start her run for the presidency. Leon Panetta, Defence Secretary, hosted the occasion. I was there too. She was glowing, elegantly attired in red jacket and smart skirt, and super-confident. She was unquestionably a superstar. The election campaign destroyed her and she lost. But at the Grammys, she was back to her old self, natural, self-assured, slightly flirtatious and clearly enjoying herself. So how could I possibly scold her for taking part in the sketch? It probably wasn't wise but, never mind, it was fun and she looked goooood.

UK, Russia and Monty Python

There are occasions when people in powerful positions make fools of themselves. They just can't help making stupid, alarmist comments. And for once I'm not talking about Donald Trump. The UK Defence Secretary, Gavin Williamson, very new in the job and exceptionally young for such a cabinet post after no previous ministerial experience, told a newspaper in a recent interview that "thousands and thousands and thousands" of Britons could be killed by a Russian cyber attack on Britain's electricity and other energy supplies. I cannot imagine what encouraged him to say such a thing. Is there intelligence that this is what Russia is planning to do in the next few weeks? Are we about to go to war with Russia? Or was he just hypothesising? If so, what on earth for? Was he making a bid for more money for the defence budget or did he just want a nice huge headline for himself? Well he got that, in the Daily Telegraph first, and then in every other newspaper. It seems to me to be staggeringly alarmist. Moscow responded by saying that such a remark was right out of a Monty Python sketch. I assume/hope Williamson was seriously embarrassed and severely upbraided by Number 10. I'm not downgrading the potential threat Putin's Russia poses. Putin is a pretty cold fish and maybe he does have dreams about crippling the West with cyber attacks. But he now knows that if he did such a thing to the US to destroy America's economy, Trump could respond with nuclear weapons. That's what is implied in his Nuclear Posture Review to be published next month. So Putin is not going to do any such thing and why would he pick out Britain for cyber annihilation. It's all nonsense. Williamson might just as well have warned in his interview with the Daily Telegraph: "If the Martians land in Britain we could face total oblivion." Alarmist and unfounded talk like this should be beneath a minister holding one of the most important jobs in government. He could easily have confined his remarks to saying that countries such as Russia were developing highly sophisticated cyber warfare technology and that this posed a serious threat in the future. OK, it doesn't make such good headlines but at least it would have been sensible and responsible. Moscow couldn't have responded then with the Monty Python jibe.

Taliban terror

Recently there have been optimistic reports that the Taliban, facing a surge in attacks by Trump-authorised airstrikes, was beginning to move towards the idea of negotiationing for a peace settlement. This has to be totally false. The Taliban has been happy today to accept responsibility for killing 95 people and injuring about 160 others in an explosives-packed ambulance suicide attack in Kabul. The driver calmly drove through TWO checkpoints without being stopped BECAUSE it was an ambulance. Terrorists always, it seems, manage to keep one step ahead of the security authorities. But this latest Taliban outrage shows that however many airstrikes and special forces raids the US and its Afghan partners carry out this year, the Taliban wants nothing to do with peace. They just want the US out and all other foreigners out and then take over Kabul again. They are ruthless, murderous, totally amoral non-human beings who will never honour anything to do with peace. They despise peace, they are addicted to violence, killing and control. They are as bad as Isis. They will never negotiate while the Americans are still in Afghanistan, but the Americans can never leave Afghanistan while the Taliban are still killing and wounding and hating. This conflict is going to continue for ever. It is bleak bleak bleak. Fanatical people, whether Islamic or not, will never understand the word compromise. Isis has been driven from Mosul and Raqqa but has that changed their ideological hatred? Of course not. The same with the Taliban. The Taliban leaders and their friends, Osama bin Laden-led al-Qaeda, were defeated and driven out of Afghanistan in 2001 and have been engaged in revenge ever since.

Trump's U-turns and double U-turns

There are certain things we know, definitely definitely absolutely definitely that Trumps wants to do, and then there are issues that are full of so many U-turns and double U-turns that we're not sure what the hell he really wants. In the first category is the Mexico Wall. It seems. almost above anything else, he wants The Wall built. The Democrats will never agree, they say building a wall is repressive, undemocratic and a ridiculous waste of money. A huge high wall along the Mexican border to keep people out would probably be all of those things. Certainly a waste of taxpayers' money. But Trump has The Wall fixed in his head and it seems that he is prepared to carry out all sorts of policy U-turns provided he gets The Wall at the end of the day. So the Dreamers immigration issue - allowing 700,000 illegal immigrants who came in to the US as children - to stay and get citizenship is now firmly on the Trump desk and he will approve it PROVIDED etc etc. He will also allow a whole lot of other illegal immigrants to stay PROVIDED etc etc. So the Democrats are going to get a lot of their treasured ideas through the Trump hands but only if they say yes to the wretched wall. I can foresee a time when the Democrats will throw up their hands and say to the president: "Ok, build your wretched wall." But they will anticipate protracted delays in Congress for the finance and meanwhile get on with passing legislation to keep the Dreamers. Trump is no fool. He is not going to allow the Democrats an inch if he thinks they're going to screw him over on The Wall. So it looks like another maddening impasse and logjam next month when the whole budget issue comes up again. Yet another government shutdown in the offing and all because of That Wall. Surely someone like General John Kelly will be able to make Trump see sense? But Kelly was formerly Homeland Security Secretary. Maybe he has a sneaking regard for the Trump idea, who knows! One way or the other, something has got to give. It could be Trump that blinks but he cares more about The Wall than the Dreamers and I can't see him backing down.

The Trump style of diplomacy

You have to say that one thing Trump does NOT do is pussyfoot around. He says what's in his head, not what his advisers advise him to say. In some ways that's good and in some ways that's bad. In Davos where he and most of the world's leaders are currently engaged in chatting about globalisation and America First and other things, Trump was asked about Israel and Palestine and he just came out with it. He decided to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital and to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv because he wanted to take that element of the impasse between the Israelis and Palestinians out of the peace-settlement equation. In other words, live with it, Palestinians, was his message. As for the Palestinian leader's refusal to countenance the US as a peace negotiator ever again, Trump had this to say: "Don't disrespect the United States!" It was right out of the Godfather movie. Then he said the US had been paying millions of dollars to the Palestinians but had decided to hold back some of the payments because he felt they were giving nothing back in return. You help us, we help you - another Godfather analogy. Then, sitting next to the Israeli Godfather, Bibi Netanyahu, Don Trump questioned whether there could ever be meaningful peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine and it was all the Palestinians' fault. Well, it was when Yasser Arafat, the ultimate peace BLOCKER, was alive and in charge. But somehow I think poor Mahmoud Abbas is probably a good guy who thinks the whole thing is desperately unfair and blames Israel because of its continued occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank and the continuing construction of settlements. But Abbas is now in real trouble, especially after he refused to meet with Mike Pence, the US Vice-President, when he was touring the region. "You disrespected my lovely vice-president," Don Trump, or perhaps Don Donald, bellowed. If Abbas is not careful he's going to find the head of a dead racehorse at the end of his bed.