The UK’s ambassador to Washington may believe the US president is merely a ‘risk taker’, but that doesn’t represent my point of view – and it probably doesn’t represent yours. That’s why we must make our voices heard
Is it ever the right time to worry about what Peter Mandelson has just said? Given he is so famously allied with the darkness, and the government is beset by more urgent problems, everywhere, it feels as if Mandelson should cut us a break and just say inoffensive things, or ideally, nothing. Instead, the ambassador to the US made a speech on Sunday to the Ditchley Foundation. Of Donald Trump, he said: “The president may not follow the traditional rulebook or conventional practice, but he is a risk taker in a world where a ‘business as usual’ approach no longer works.” According to Mandelson, those of us arguing for a pivot away from the special relationship are guilty of “lazy thinking”.
Some things are so depressing that they make themselves urgent, just by resting their boot upon your spirit. “Traditional rulebook or conventional practice” – I guess, by that, Mandelson means the traditional rule of law, where you don’t deport people without due process, to countries they weren’t even born in, or detain four-year-olds in the middle of cancer treatment. Or maybe he means the “conventional practice” of thinking genocide is bad; we live in a world where that belief has apparently been overturned, replaced by an AI mock-up of what Gaza would look like cleansed of its remaining inhabitants.
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