With the backing of the new US President Donald Trump, the UK is in a great position and Brexit success is a Don deal
Trump's election has made the UK more important to Europe as he looks for better relations with Russia
“TRUMP changes almost everything,” declares one Cabinet minister who supported Remain but now thinks Brexit will be a success.
Their argument is that the arrival of the most unexpected US President in history has shaken things up, and to Britain’s advantage.
Those who know the new President well tell me that Trump is emotionally invested in Brexit. He feels that it and his own victory are part of the same movement.
Despite his alarmingly protectionist instincts, which were set out again in his speech yesterday, Trump does want a trade pact with the UK. This, and the offers from other countries, is a reminder that Britain won’t be isolated and alone after Brexit.
Trump is telling people he wants to get personally involved in negotiating the US/UK deal. I understand his team have done more work on it than they have for any other potential agreement.
But Trump’s election has also made the UK more important to Europe. Trump’s worryingly ambivalent attitude to Nato and his desire for better relations with Vladimir Putin’s Russia at almost any price, means that the UK is more important to the continent’s security than it has been for 60-odd years.
Trump has also reversed US policy to the EU. For 60 years, Washington has supported European integration. But Trump doesn’t. He and his team prefer strong nation states to big, supranational organisations.
The new President acts like he wants the EU to fall apart. In a provocative act, he is planning to make a Brexit-backer the US’s ambassador to the EU and is predicting that other countries will follow this one out the door.
This hostility has rattled EU leaders. When Theresa May spoke to Jean-Claude Juncker and Donald Tusk, the presidents of the EU Commission and Council, after her Brexit speech on Tuesday, they both brought up Trump’s comments about other countries leaving the EU.
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They both stressed how pleased they were that Mrs May had made clear that she wanted the EU to succeed.
The respectful EU reaction to her speech — Tusk compared it to Churchill’s vision of Britain and Europe — opens up the possibility of a sensible Brexit deal.
This would see Britain outside the EU but bolstering it on security as it tries to deal with the Islamist terrorist threat and Russian aggression. The relationship would be underpinned by continued, close trading links between the UK and the EU.
A good Brexit deal is in both sides’ interests. As even the guy who likes to play the hard-man in EU negotiations the German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble, admits, a breakdown in the Brexit talks, “would be a disaster for all of us”.
With Britain not trying to stay in the EU internal market, the two sides — with sufficient political will — should be able to negotiate a free trade deal.
Add in the EU’s desire for continued access to the City’s financial markets, as revealed in a leak of a meeting between Brussels’ chief negotiator Michel Barnier and senior MEPs, and you can see the outlines of an agreement.
When Trump started running for President, he thought he had only a ten per cent chance of winning the Republican nomination.
He privately quipped that his tilt at the presidency would, at least, increase his speaking fees. But now he is the man in the Oval Office.
Who knows how this truth-is-stranger-than- fiction tale will end, and the Trump presidency could go disastrously wrong as his angry inauguration address reminded us.
But if the UK can secure free trade deals with the EU and the US, this country will be in a great position to head out into the world and secure a more prosperous future for itself.
Lessons needed in industry
AN economy that works for everyone has been one of Theresa May’s main pledges since she became Prime Minister.
But there has been little detail about how she will make that happen.
But on Monday, the Government will publish its industrial strategy. The May team see this as key to making the economy work for the whole country.
To mark the occasion, the May Cabinet will meet outside of London for the first time.
Cabinet ministers will also be dispatched to those places that have been left behind by the economic growth of recent decades to sell the Government’s plan.
Business Secretary Greg Clark has, sensibly, put plans to improve education and technical training at the centre of this industrial strategy.
He is alarmed by the fact that England is the only advanced economy in the world where 16 to 24-year-olds are no more literate or numerate than 55 to 64-year-olds.
This failure to make any educational progress in the past 30 years means that a slew of other countries have either caught up with or overtaken us.
Some progress has been made in sorting out our education system in recent years.
But the ferocity with which the teaching unions and the educational establishment fought Michael Gove is a reminder of how much more there is to be done.
May's Government has already blundered in relations with America
THERE has been one early misstep in the May Government’s relationship with the Trump team.
When Mrs May’s chiefs of staff, Fiona Hill and Nick Timothy, flew to the States to meet his key aides in mid-December, they were told that the incoming administration did not want the UK to back any UN motion critical of Israel that was put down in the Obama presidency’s final days.
But just before Christmas, the UK voted for a UN resolution condemning Israel’s settlements policy. I am informed that the Trump team quickly made clear their displeasure.
I understand that Mrs May’s chiefs of staff were annoyed about the UK voting for this resolution despite them having passed on this warning.
“There’s an inquest going on into what happened,” one senior Government figure tells me.
A few days later, No10 attacked Obama’s Secretary of State John Kerry for his speech criticising the Israeli government.
I understand this was part of an effort to mend fences with the incoming administration following the UN vote.
In the past week, the UK has also snubbed a French Middle East peace conference and blocked an EU statement on how it could encourage a resumption of the peace process.
But it is alarming that such an important message got lost in the Whitehall system.
It would be inauthentic for PM to curb her wardrobe
Despite the row over her £995 leather trousers, No10 won't be trying to curb Theresa May's wardrobe.
The decision has been made that Mrs May is a well-paid professional married to another well-paid professional and it would be inauthentic to try to make her dress any other way.
The May team points out that David Cameron flying easyJet Hardly made voters think he was one of them.
On the Hunt for a new job?
No10 senses it has an opportunity on the NHS. It is struck by polling showing that Theresa May is more trusted on it than Jeremy Corbyn.
But there is concern among some that Jeremy Hunt, who has been Health Secretary for more than four years, isn’t up for this fight.
I’m told he’s not fighting battles as keenly as he should.
But Hunt has repeatedly made clear that the only Cabinet job he’s interested in is being Health Secretary.