What should British Prime Minister Theresa May talk about when she becomes the first world leader to meet President Trump?
There are those – like me – who think that discussions should be used to enhance the Special Relationship and to help fast-track the bilateral trade deals President Trump is so keen to arrange with Britain.
And then there are those, such as this columnist in the Guardian, who appear to believe that Theresa May should spend the time discussing her vagina.
Not literally her vagina, perhaps. But you know what I mean. What this Guardian hack and Channel 4 news and the usual feminazi suspects and rent-a-gob female MPs generally are arguing for is that Theresa May should waste official business time parading her “gender” and trying to score points off the Donald by showing how heartily she disapproves of his alleged misogyny and sexism and locker-room banter.
For a nasty moment earlier this week it looked like Theresa May was actually going to accede to this ludicrous interpretation of her priorities, which seemed to demand that she should consider herself a woman first and the British Prime Minister only second.
Asked in an interview about President Trump’s “misogynistic and racist remarks,” May replied: “I’ve been clear about those areas where I feel some of the comments he has made were unacceptable. The whole point about [a special relationship] is that we can sit down and be very frank with each other about what we think.”
This was over-interpreted by the Mail to produce the headline: “Cut out your sexist insults, Mr President: Theresa May prepared to use first summit to tackle Trump’s abuse of women… as 2 million march in protest.”
Since then, though, May has given every indication that she intends to take a more mature and sensible approach to the encounter.
At Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday, the PM said she was pleased to meet Mr Trump ‘so early in his administration’.
She added: ‘That is a sign of the strength of the special relationship between the United Kingdom and the United States of America – a special relationship on which he and I intend to build.’
And:
‘We will be looking for a UK-US trade deal that improves trade between our two countries, that will bring prosperity and growth to this country and that will ensure that we can bring jobs to this country as well.
Things have come to a pretty pass when the most intelligent advice on how a British Prime Minister should engage with a US President comes courtesy of Piers Morgan. But just for once Morgan is right. This is definitely not the occasion to bang on tediously about women’s rights:
But if he feels you’re just there to score some easy points with the media about him being a sexist, misogynist pig, the Special Relationship will be D.O.A.
Apart from being a stupid tactical error, it would be a grotesquely misguided strategic one.
First, it would be a particularly suicidal case of looking a gift horse in the mouth. President Trump is itching to give Britain a first rate trade deal, partly because he’s a genuine Anglophile, partly in order to troll the European Union. It would be barmy beyond measure for Theresa May to reject such overtures in order to make some tendentious political point about women or British independence or some such nonsense. Right now – having alienated itself from an entire continent – Britain needs all the friends it can get.
Second, Theresa May is not Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Donald Trump is not Alec D’Urberville. Sure that’s how the feminazis and anti-Americans might like to cast this meeting: the wicked, untrustworthy seducer using his power and wealth and privilege to impose himself on a blushing virgin. But when you’re a woman and you become Prime Minister of Britain you become, as President Trump might put it in one of his more indelicate moments, bigger than your pussy.
That is, it’s not just a minority of professional offence-taking feminists and SJW snowflakes you’re representing: you’re also representing a much bigger minority including people like me.
Some of us are men; some of us are undeniably sexist pigs; some of us are women who just don’t go in for all that wimmin’s nonsense; but it really doesn’t matter what our sexual politics are because the fact is, it’s the job of the British Prime Minister to speak for all of us.
Theresa May seems to get uncomfortable when the Special Relationship between Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher is invoked.
But there’s at least one thing she could learn from what a biographer once wrote about her illustrious predecessor.
“In Margaret Thatcher’s view, her sex is an irrelevancy, and she is annoyed by people who make too much of a fuss over it.”
Precisely. Whatever Theresa May’s views on sexism she should jolly well keep them to herself when she meets Donald Trump.
Oh, and one more thing, Prime Minister. Definitely don’t go the other way and wear those nipple tassels….
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