We begin in many people’s happy place, at Four Seasons Total Landscaping. As you may know, Donald Trump’s losing presidential campaign held a press conference that has passed immediately into the annals of political comedy. And also the annals of horticultural business marketing. Consider this Philadelphia gardening establishment the world’s leading purveyor of seasonal colour.
If you somehow missed the Four Seasons Total Landscaping story, it was truly the quattro stagioni of political events. Each time it seemed it couldn’t get any better, there turned out to be some new quarter of it to enjoy.
But let me briefly summarise. On Saturday, the current US president tweeted that a “big press conference” would be held that morning at the Four Seasons in Philadelphia. Shortly thereafter, his account offered clarification – that wasn’t the hotel, but somewhere called Four Seasons Total Landscaping. Double-taking at their satnavs, reporters scrambled to this prestige location in a suburban business park, where Trump branding had been hastily affixed to the roller door of a single-storey building. Then again, the backdrop was really the best of it. Pan out, and the venue lay next door to a sex shop and a crematorium.
Clearly this was … unconventional. Yet amazingly, the world’s media would indeed end up being addressed there. Not by Trump, but by his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. Dead people were always voting in Philadelphia, Rudy claimed. Joe Frazier, and Will Smith’s dad (twice).
And as he said all this, he was flanked by a long line of unsmiling campaign guys trying to look like nothing could be more normal than standing in a forgotten corner of suburbia in front of some garden hoses. There are millions of potential captions to the picture. Let’s go with something befitting the tragedy: They Were Four Years In Power.
Perhaps the biggest question to come out of the Four Seasons Total Landscaping press conference is: why did they carry on with it? Some sort of mistake had clearly been made, so why did they persist and pretend it hadn’t? Many speculate it was down to fear of not obeying the will of the White House idiot, however lunatic the reality of it may appear. Others simply think that by the time the campaign staff stopped screaming, they felt they were in too deep to turn around.
Either way, the upshot is the same: no matter the absurdity of any situation, no matter how ridiculous it looks when you get there, there will ALWAYS be a line of guys ready to butch it out like it was their plan along. There will ALWAYS be a line of guys who feel that it is somehow less ridiculous to look completely ridiculous than it is to simply say: “Oh wait, we made a mistake – give us half an hour and we’ll tell you the new venue.” There will ALWAYS be a line of guys who, even if they walked over a cliff, would leave very specific last words echoing behind them. “I meant to do that.”
It was at this point, about three days into the story, that I suddenly stopped, mid-laugh. Like a flash, it had dawned on me. Oh I SEE, I thought. How very “United Kingdom”. These days, our country is that press conference. Whether it be butching out the warnings of 7,000-long lorry queues, or pissing off a new US president who already thinks our government is a nasty basket case, Boris Johnson & Co are very much one of those lines of guys. Source of escalating international bemusement or amusement? Yeah, we meant to do that.
This morning, it was claimed that Johnson’s congratulatory tweet to Biden was a hastily doctored congratulatory message to Trump – with the remains of the Trump message still slightly visible. Think of it as the Turin shroud of digital incompetence – and accept that some hyper-defensive Whitehall source will turn up to say “actually we meant to do that”.
Meanwhile, the government’s insistence on the international law-breaking clauses in its internal markets bill could easily leave the UK with no meaningful EU or US trade deal. On Monday night, John Major warned that the plan “is unprecedented in all our history – and for good reason. It has damaged our reputation around the world.” Still, we meant to do that. “Because of our bombast, our blustering, our threats and our inflexibility,” continued Major, “our trade will be less profitable, our Treasury poorer, our jobs fewer, and our future less prosperous.” I guess we meant to do that.
A month and a half from the end of transition, the guys who promised people the sunlit uplands are now building giant car parks like it’s a positive thing. Or to put it another way, they are telling you that the Four Seasons – an international standard of luxury and service – is actually less good than Four Seasons Total Landscaping. We still plan to exit transition in midwinter in a deadly pandemic we’ve known about almost the whole year. They are butching it out.
This is statecraft by Clouseau. There’s a bit in The Pink Panther Strikes Again where the inspector finds himself in a home gym and is trying to show off his familiarity with the parallel bars. He take a couple of swings, then loses control in the dismount and contrives not just to be thrown off the bars, but all the way down a long nearby staircase, right into the middle of a genteel drawing room scene. Noting the gaze of the room’s inhabitants, Clouseau picks himself up and declares: “Well, that felt good!”
This, but with a trade policy on which our national and international future hinges. Perhaps, like Clouseau, we will agonisingly pratfall our way to eventual Brexit triumph, and not have senselessly angered the new US administration along the way. However, real life not being a carefully plotted movie farce, we might have to accept that the chances are we won’t. Still, you can be sure that whatever happens, some guys will be claiming they meant to do it all.
• Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
Source: Elections - theguardian.com
