Londoner's Diary: How will Team May deal with The Donald?

Getty Images / Carl Court / Staff
10 October 2016

As Donald Trump achieved new levels of scandal over the weekend with his sexist “locker room” comments, are British officials getting squeamish about working with the Republican hopeful? The top team is understandly quiet but MP George Freeman, Theresa May’s “designated thinker” as chair of her policy board, broke cover this morning. He tweeted: “Somehow Trump appears still to be in the race as a serious candidate for President. A massive failure of mainstream politics.”

The Foreign Office is remaining studiously neutral, telling us that officials from the British Embassy in Washington have met representatives from the Trump campaign in the run-up to the vote, as is customary. “Throughout the history of the ‘special relationship’ we have worked with figures from both sides of the political divide in the US to advance our mutual interests,” an FCO spokesman said this morning. “This includes the nominees for both the Republican and Democratic parties.”

The special relationship requires good lines of communication behind the scenes. Tony Blair’s chief of staff Jonathan Powell caught the future PM’s eye by forging good relations with Bill Clinton and Al Gore’s team during the 1992 campaign. More recently our Ambassador to the US, Kim Darroch, attended the Republican convention.

However, one wonders what fancy footwork will be going on at the FCO over how Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson will talk to his potential counterparts. When Trump said that parts of London were so “radicalised” that police were afraid to go into them last year, then Mayor Johnson had a sharp rebuke: “The only reason I wouldn’t go to some parts of New York is the real risk of meeting Donald Trump.”

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Serial biographer of prime ministers Sir Anthony Seldon wrote a piece in a Sunday newspaper on Theresa May as Tory leader. Former Master of Wellington College, Seldon has written on Blair, Brown and most recently Cameron. He noted that May is formed “not by Conservative thinkers or philosophers of any hue, but by life”. Will he pull out his quill again for Theresa? One problem: as a great defender of public schools, is Sir Anthony part of the liberal elite?

Hitting the right note over Brexit

As a fractious Brexit comes ever closer, at least Fascinating Aïda are keeping in tune.

This summer the musical trio performed We’re Sorry Scotland, an apology for Brexit, as part of their Edinburgh Fringe Festival show, and have now released it online. “We’re so sorry Scotland, we are covered in shame/ For the madness of Brexit we’re entirely to blame/ With the choice of two boxes, we ticked ‘self-destruct’/ Thus Britain is now comprehensively f***ed... We’re so sorry Scotland for the likes of Farage/ And his NHS millions, which were just a mirage/ Oh yes we’re in a pickle, come rescue us Nicola/ Because as pickles go, this couldn’t be pickler.” Catchy.

Ewan's found the perfect direction

The Londoner was at the Bulgari Hotel in Knightsbridge on Saturday for a screening of an adaptation of Philip Roth’s novel American Pastoral. Ewan McGregor who makes his directorial debut with the film, hosted a Perrier-Jouët reception with actresses Morgane Polanski and Cressida Bonas.

Reactions were glowing — Polanski, daughter of director Roman, called it remarkable — but Bonas’s attention was halfway across the ocean. She was overheard expressing how much she missed her property developer beau Harry Wentworth-Stanley, who is rowing the Atlantic for charity. With this country and the US in turmoil, how pleasant to be at sea.

Nagging doubts over London horses

Why the long face? The Londoner clopped over to Soho on Friday for the launch of The Age of the Horse, a new tome by author Susanna Forrest. After Helen Macdonald’s H is For Hawk and India Knight’s The Goodness of Dogs, it suggests animals may be the latest literary trend.

Forrest covers everything from Nazi wild horse hunts to meat markets in America, so why, we wondered, launch in London? “London’s a hippopolis — so much of it was built by and for working horses,” Forrest said. “You can’t move for reminders such as the Mint Wing at St Mary’s Hospital, which used to be a stable for 600 horses, or Silwex House in Spitalfields, an old multi-storey stable that’s being converted into a Travelodge.”

Supported by former Erotic Review colleagues Rowan Pelling and Annie Blinkhorn, she explained how London is losing its working-class horse culture. “The royal stables and fancy places get preserved but developers are squeezing out people who aren’t posh but have kept horses in London for generations,” she explained. “A massive chunk of history is vanishing. I’m hoping the book will make people curious to know more.”

The Londoner hopes for an equestrian renaissance, although there will inevitably be neigh-sayers.

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Michael Winterbottom’s new film On the Road premiered at the London Film Festival yesterday. It’s a documentary following the band Wolf Alice on tour. But pity the poor beat-generation fan who took a seat expecting a different film: “Didn’t they just make this?” a person in the queue was overheard saying. They were hoping for an adaptation of the Jack Kerouac novel.

Melinda’s literary journey

New book Chic Stays, a collection of perfect travel destinations chosen by stars including Kate Winslet and Kate Moss, is compiled by Condé Nast Traveller editor Melinda Stevens, daughter of the late news baron Sir Jocelyn Stevens and aunt of the three Delevingne sisters. But is it an improvement on a previous literary attempt?

“This is not the first book I have been involved with,” she explained at the launch at Maison Assouline in Piccadilly last week. “Fifteen years ago I wrote what I thought was a sensational novel. I convinced myself it was going to win a few key prizes. And then I read it to my husband and he paused for a very long time, then said, ‘That was simply the most depressing thing that I have ever listened to’.”

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Birthday of the day: Clare Hollingworth, the Daily Telegraph reporter who broke the news that German tanks were massing on the border with Poland in 1939, turns 105 today.

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