It is a great cosmic irony that Theresa May’s final hours as prime minister should be spent chaperoning Donald Trump, the self-styled Mr. Brexit, on his madcap tour of the United Kingdom. Trump, after all, is the most vulgar embodiment of the populist fever that has spread to both countries and which May has spent her leadership trying to palliate. On Tuesday, May had to laugh when Trump said he hoped she would “stick around” to complete a trade deal with the United States, though it was not clear if he was kidding or, indeed, was fully aware that she is resigning on Friday. Such is the tragicomic arc that concludes May’s three-year turn as executrix of Britain’s foolhardy and self-defeating effort to cleave itself from Europe.
Standing among the several thousands who turned out Tuesday in London to protest President Trump’s first official state visit, one might have been forgiven for feeling a spark of patriotism, long dormant, in standing tall against the caddish foreign interloper. One student mowed a colossal penis under Trump’s flight path, alongside a message about climate change. Another group projected his low approval ratings in Britain across the Tower of London, and a massive USS John S. McCain hat onto the roof of Madame Tussauds. And, for a second year, the Trump baby blimp bobbed around Westminster, overlooking crowds of protesters.
Trump, always playing to type, pretended not to have seen the protests. “There were thousands of people on the streets cheering,” the president said, during a joint conference with May. Later, as he awoke Wednesday at the U.S. ambassador’s residence, Winfield House in Regent’s Park, he would tweet wonderingly at his cordial reception. “I kept hearing that there would be ‘massive’ rallies against me in the U.K., but it was quite the opposite,” he wrote. “The big crowds, which the Corrupt Media hates to show, were those that gathered in support of the USA and me.”
Britain, too, is in a state of denial. After nearly three years with no progress on Brexit and no plan in place, the United Kingdom remains divided, isolated, furiously paralyzed, and in state of permanent political crisis. Thirty-six members of the government have resigned in the past 12 months; voters have deserted the two leading parties for failing to define their stance on Brexit; and all manner of Kafka-esque negotiations with Brussels have gone nowhere. Three times May submitted a withdrawal agreement to Parliament, and three times it was rejected.
Still, change is coming, and with it the chance for President Trump to influence Britain’s volatile political landscape. The race to succeed Theresa May, an open secret for months, is officially on. In the coming weeks, roughly 124,000 paid-up members of the Conservative Party (predominantly white, male Brexiteers) get to choose the next prime minister, who will become the second unelected leader in a row to take charge of Brexit, the deep-rooted grievances that inspired it, and the country of 65 million that it has divided.
A global symbol of the nationalist politics sweeping the West, Trump’s presence at such a fragile juncture could well shape the path Britain takes in the coming years. During time off from touring the Churchill War Rooms and the Palace gardens, the president explicitly exercised that power. On Tuesday, he declined to meet with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn (“somewhat of a negative force”) but extended invitations to Downing Street hopeful Michael Gove and acolyte Nigel Farage, Brexit Bad Boy turned Brexit Party leader, whom he has suggested should join the U.K.’s Brexit negotiating team. While Trump is hardly beloved, even amongst Leavers, his presidential endorsement could well resonate in an imminent by-election in the city of Peterborough, where the Brexit Party are hoping to score their first Westminster seat after a success in the European elections.
For Britain, the timing of Trump’s arrival was farcical. For Trump, it was spectacular. With his hosts floundering, weak and in urgent need of some trade deals, clearly there was more leverage to squeeze from this visit than photo shoots with the royals. On Tuesday, Trump praised the “extraordinary” alliance between the U.K. and the U.S., and promised a “phenomenal” trade deal, but stressed that “everything is on the table”—including the treasured National Health Service. (Trump hastily rescinded his comments in a subsequent interview with Piers Morgan, even as Farage defended them.)
Farming out the NHS will now become a flash point in the leadership battle. (Already, Jeremy Corbyn has seized on the comments, telling a packed crowd at Whitehall that Brexit must not become a Trojan horse for American corporate imperialism, and that Labour will “fight with every last breath of our body to defend the principle of a healthcare system free at the point of need for everybody as a human right.”) But, really, the measuring stick is how far candidates can stake their pole in relation to Trump. Most front-runners, including Gove, Dominic Raab, and favorite Boris Johnson, are claiming they can win back the swathes of voters who defected to Farage’s Brexit Party in the E.U. elections, as a protest against Conservative’s failure to get Brexit done. While most people don’t support a no-deal exit, a lot of Tory members do, and so Raab and BoJo, amongst others, are jauntily flying that flag, deemed “economic lunacy” by more intellectual peers.
Of course this is a page from Trump’s radical playbook, painting anyone opposed to a no-deal Brexit as squishes or subversives, enemies of the people lacking the grit and resolve to make hard decisions and get the job done. As Rachel Sylvester writes in the Times of London: “It is in fact hard to think of a less conservative policy than a ‘no deal’ Brexit, which would represent an economically risky, politically reckless, and constitutionally chaotic rupture with the past. Yet the willingness to contemplate this outcome has become the purity test for candidates to succeed Theresa May.” So far, none of the front-runners have demonstrated any interest in dissecting the Brexit result, interrogating its causes, or trying to heal the country.
The British establishment did make its point against Trump’s divisive, infectious approach to the world order—albeit in a subtle, stiff-upper-lip kind of way. As a parting gift, Theresa May presented Trump with a framed copy of Winston Churchill’s personal draft of the Atlantic Charter, a foundational text of the United Nations, which he signed alongside President Roosevelt in 1941. The Queen also stressed the importance of multilateralism and cooperation during a speech at Monday’s state banquet. “After the shared sacrifices of the Second World War, Britain and the United States worked with other allies to build an assembly of international institutions to ensure that the horrors of conflict would never be repeated,” she said. “While the world has changed, we are forever mindful of the original purpose of these structures: nations working together to safeguard a hard-won peace.”
Perhaps they should have aimed their cloaked warnings closer to home. Not much is clear in weary Britain right now but this: Brexit is a bigger disruptor than any leader. It will outlive Trump, and overshadow Boris Johnson. If he does become prime minister, he will have two choices. Go hard and face economic disaster. Go soft and lose his base. Either way, the insatiable politics of Trump and Brexit will surely devour him, as they did May.