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      The Observer view on the secret garage files that could deal a severe blow to Joe Biden’s hopes | Observer editorial

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      The Observer view on the secret garage files that could deal a severe blow to Joe Biden’s hopesObserver editorialMore harmful than the alleged misplacement of classified documents will be a further erosion of trust in US politics It is almost a Washington tradition that, sooner or later, a sitting president will face investigation by a federal special counsel or special prosecutor – the terms are interchangeable. In recent history, only Barack Obama has escaped this fate and that was not for lack of opponents accusing him of nefarious misdeeds.Now it’s Joe Biden’s turn and wolves are once again baying at the door of the Oval Office.At first glance, last week’s revelations that old, possibly outdated classified documents had been found at a thinktank where Biden worked after leaving the vice-presidency in 2017, and in a garage at his home in Delaware, may not seem such a big deal. But such a view fails to understand the way Washington works. Significant or not, the find has given the flailing Republican party a stick with which to beat the president and it has seized it with grateful alacrity.A clutch of GOP-controlled committees in Congress has already launched a series of investigations, in addition to the independent special counsel inquiry ordered by Biden’s attorney-general, Merrick Garland. They want to know whether national security was compromised; whether Biden’s son Hunter – a longtime Republican target – had access to the files; and why the White House failed to admit their existence until forced to do so by a CBS TV scoop.Crucially, Biden’s opponents are posing the classic Watergate questions: what did the president know, when did he know it and was there a cover-up? It’s a sad fact that whatever Biden says now or in the course of what are likely to be wearying, attritional months of testimony and hearings, many Americans will not believe him. The distrust that infects and distorts US politics can only be expected to deepen.The distraction of attention from Biden’s agenda and achievements is one of many prospective negatives for the president. Another is the unfair, potentially disastrous conflation of his alleged wrongdoing with the ostensibly much more serious case of his predecessor. Donald Trump is accused of secreting hundreds of contemporary classified papers at his Florida home and refusing to hand them over.Biden previously accused Trump of “irresponsible” behaviour, words that are now being thrown back in his face. Suggestions that the misplacing of the documents was a mere oversight or act of forgetfulness play into the hurtful Republican narrative of a senile, incompetent 80-year-old president.Biden did not help himself by joking that his garage was a secure space because he keeps his classic Corvette car there. If the word “Corvette-gate” has not already entered the lexicon, it soon will.The extent of the damage to Biden and the Democrats will depend in part on whether Trump, the Republicans and their Fox News boosters succeed in sustaining and widening the scandal. They will propagate lies, disinformation and conspiracy theories.The White House will try to play down the affair. Yet if, for example, the special counsel discovers the documents – reportedly relating to Ukraine, Iran and the UK – are not merely historical but contain current, sensitive or embarrassing secrets, Biden could be in deep water, politically and legally.It’s almost exactly two years since Biden took office. After a rough start, his fortunes have steadily improved. Inflation is sharply down, Covid is mostly over (unlike in China), Russia is losing in Ukraine, Democrats did better than expected in the midterm elections and Maga Trump-ism continues to divide House Republicans. An announcement of a Biden run for a second term had been expected soon. All these gains suddenly appear in jeopardy and all because of a few dusty boxes of files.TopicsUS politicsOpinionJoe BidenRepublicansDonald TrumpeditorialsReuse this content More

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      Today’s rightwing populists aim to disrupt, not to govern | Letters

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      LettersToday’s rightwing populists aim to disrupt, not to govern Readers respond to an article by Jonathan Freedland on the decline of politics on both sides of the Atlantic An excellent analysis by Jonathan Freedland on the problems with the far right and their inability to govern as grownups (After Brexit and Trump, rightwing populists cling to power – but the truth is they can’t govern, 7 January). Governance has been reduced to the anarchic whims of individuals who learn their trade on social media, a platform that fuels their infantilism. It is extremely dangerous when these people have access to power. Exhibit A: Donald Trump.Suppose that during the attack on the Capitol on 6 January 2021, the elected lawmakers and the police had rolled over and given way to the mob, let them take up residence in the Capitol and become the new lawmakers. What might have played out? Would one of them (the man in the horned helmet perhaps?) have declared himself a senator/congressman and the leader of the House? Would he have proposed some new laws to his comrades in arms, or laws to help fellow American citizens live happier and better lives? Alison HackettDún Laoghaire, Dublin, Ireland As ever, Jonathan Freedland critically analyses the descent of rightwing politics on both sides of the Atlantic. The deterioration, however, is not restricted to the right. In days gone by, politicians such as John Smith, Gordon Brown, Michael Heseltine and Ken Clarke sought to lead, not follow, the public. They said what they believed and tried to implement and convince. Today, politicians seem to follow rather than lead the public, following, no doubt, the latest focus groups in marginal constituencies.Politicians such as Keir Starmer and Jeremy Hunt undoubtedly know that Britain’s interests are best served by a closer relationship with (if not membership of) the European Union. Rather than be honest about this and try to persuade their fellow citizens, they coalesce around what they believe is the popular position.Brian RonsonSefton, Merseyside The truth is that today’s right wing is not motivated to govern. They have been complicit in, and echo, the rightwing media message that has droned on for decades – a message straight out of the anti-democracy playbook. This is nothing new in recorded human history. “My way or burn it down” has been a consistent theme in radical fascist or fundamentalist mentality. Concern for consequence or social justice is not a guiding principle here. In fact, there is no guiding principle other than a manic five-year-old’s ambition to control the household. When that ambition inevitably leads to a bad end, they blame everyone but themselves and/or reach for a match. Curt Chaffee Seaside, California, USTopicsUS politicsDonald TrumpThe far rightRepublicansBrexitlettersReuse this content More

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      After Brexit and Trump, rightwing populists cling to power – but the truth is they can’t govern | Jonathan Freedland

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      After Brexit and Trump, rightwing populists cling to power – but the truth is they can’t governJonathan FreedlandThe farcical scenes among US Republicans have echoes in our Tory party. Both promise disruption, then deliver exactly that The US right has this week been staging a clown show that has had liberals in that country and beyond pulling up a chair and breaking out the popcorn. There has been a karmic pleasure in watching the Republicans who won control of the House of Representatives struggle to complete the most basic piece of business – the election of a speaker – but it’s also been instructive, and not only to Americans. For it has confirmed the dirty little secret of that strain of rightwing populist politics that revels in what it calls disruption: it always ends in bitter factional fighting, chaos and paralysis. We in Britain should know, because Brexit has gone the exact same way.Start with the karma that saw House Republicans gather two years to the day since they sought to prevent the peaceful transfer of power from one party to another: often overlooked in the anniversary recollections of 6 January 2021 is that, mere hours after rioters had stormed the US Capitol, a majority of Republican House members voted to do precisely as the rioters had demanded and overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Yet here were those same House Republicans on 6 January 2023, having prevented the smooth transfer of power from one party to another – except this time, the party they were thwarting was their own.House still without speaker as McCarthy pleads with Republican holdouts – liveRead moreIt should have been straightforward. Republicans won a narrow majority in the House in November, which gave them the right to put one of their number in the speaker’s chair. The trouble was, while most backed Kevin McCarthy, about 20 rebels did not. By Thursday night, they had gone through 11 rounds of voting – the most since the civil war era – without McCarthy or anyone else winning a majority. The result: deadlock.It was a study in incompetence. A party asks the electorate to give them power; they get it and then freeze, unable to take even the first step towards using it. There’s no clear political logic to the stalemate. The rebels are devotees of Donald Trump, but McCarthy himself is a tireless Trump sycophant – patronised by the former president as “my Kevin” – who begged for and won the backing of the orange one. The pro-Trump rebels are divided among themselves: one rebuked Trump for sticking with McCarthy, while another voted to make Trump himself speaker.It’s telling that the rebels’ demands are not on policy but on procedure, seeking rule changes or committee seats that would give them more power. Otherwise, they can’t really say what they want. They succeeded in getting metal detectors removed from the entrance to the chamber, so now people can walk on to the floor of the House carrying a gun, but apart from that, and their hunger to start investigating Democrats, including Joe Biden’s son Hunter, nothing.All this has significance for the year ahead in US politics. For one thing, it’s yet more evidence of the diminishing strength of Trump among Republican leaders, if not yet among the party faithful. For another, if Republicans cannot make a relatively easy decision like this one, how are they going to make the tough but necessary choices that are coming – such as authorising the spending, and debt, required to keep the US government functioning?But its meaning goes far wider. For what’s been on display this week, in especially florid form, is a strain of politics that has infected many democracies, including our own. Its key feature is its delight in disruption, in promising to upend the system. That was the thrust of the twin movements of 2016, Trump and Brexit. Both promised to sweep away the elites, the experts, the orthodoxy – whether in Washington DC or Brussels. They were new movements, but they were drawing on deep roots. Four decades ago both Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher cast themselves as radicals daring to shake off the dead hand of the government.So we can hardly be surprised that those who railed against government should be so bad at it. They promised disruption, and that’s what they’ve delivered. In the US it was the chaos of Trump himself, and now a House of mini-Trumps that can’t tie its own shoelaces. In the UK, it looks different: we have a prime minister in Rishi Sunak whose pitch is technocratic competence. But that should not conceal two things.First, the post-2016 Tory party delivered just as much parliamentary turmoil and intra-party division as McCarthy and co served up this week. Whether it was the Commons gridlock of the two years preceding the 2019 election or the psychodrama of the three years after it, Brexit-era Conservatism has proved every bit as unhinged as Trump-era Republicanism. When it comes to burn-it-all-down politics, the Republicans’ craziest wing are mere novices compared with a master arsonist such as Liz Truss. The US and UK are simply at different points in the cycle.House Democrats should unite with moderate Republicans to elect a speaker | Robert ReichRead moreSecond, even with Sunak in charge, and though painted in less vivid colours, Brexit-era Toryism is just as paralysed as its sister movement in the US. The five-point plan unveiled in the PM’s new year address consisted mostly of the basics of state administration – growing the economy, managing inflation – rather than anything amounting to a political programme.And that’s chiefly because his party, like the Republicans, cannot agree among themselves. Consider how much Sunak has had to drop, under pressure from assorted rebels. Whether it was reform of the planning system, the manifesto commitment to build 300,000 new houses a year or the perennial pledge to grasp the nettle of social care, Sunak has had to back away from tasks that are essential for the wellbeing of the country. True, he has avoided the farcical scenes that played out this week on Capitol Hill, but that’s only because he has preferred to preserve the veneer of unity than to force a whole slew of issues. The result is a prime minister who cannot propose much more than extra maths lessons lest he lose the fractious, restive coalition that keeps him in office.None of this is coincidence. It’s in the nature of the rightwing populist project, in Britain, the US and across the globe. Brexit is the exemplar, a mission that worked with great potency as a campaign, as a slogan, but which could never translate into governing, because it was never about governing. It was about disrupting life, not organising it – or even acknowledging the trade-offs required to organise it. It offered the poetry of destruction, not the prose of competence.The Conservatives are several stages further down this road than the Republicans, perhaps because their power has been uninterrupted throughout. But in both cases, and others, the shift is unmistakable. Once parties of the right saw themselves as the obvious custodians of state authority: the natural party of government. Now they are happier shaking their fists at those they insist are really in charge. They are becoming the natural party of opposition. Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist
      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionRepublicansDonald TrumpBrexitConservativesRishi SunakEuropean UnioncommentReuse this content More

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      The right thrives on bullying ‘snowflakes’. But who will vote for it when they grow old? | Owen Jones

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      The right thrives on bullying ‘snowflakes’. But who will vote for it when they grow old? Owen JonesYoung people deprived of prosperity may represent the first generation that doesn’t grow more conservative with age Spite. When you dig down to the essence of modern rightwing politics, you’re left with little else. This wasn’t always the case. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan offered clear, coherent visions of society, even if their worship of free markets delivered economic insecurity and stagnating living standards. While today’s Tories and Trumpified Republicans remain committed to defending privileged interests, their driving ambition now seems to be deliberately provoking fury among the progressively minded, much to the delight of their supporters. It’s this tendency that led Donald Trump to denounce Mexicans as criminals and attempt to ban Muslims from entering the US; it’s the same tendency that drove the home secretary, Suella Braverman, to declare that her “dream” and “obsession” was to see a flight transporting asylum seekers to Rwanda. Cruelty is precisely the point.But this spite has found a particular target in younger British and American people, many of whom increasingly embrace progressive social values such as anti-racism and LGBTQ+ rights (granted, this relies on a generous definition of youth as millennials – while the oldest members of Generation Z are only in their mid-20s, the most senior millennials have now reached their early 40s). These generations have become a common enemy for the right. The feeling is mutual. According to new research and survey data, millennials are defying a supposed iron law of politics, that we shift to the right as we age. No other generation in recorded political history has retained such an entrenched rejection of rightwing politics as they’ve grown older.The right has become its own gravedigger for two reasons. First, by building an economic model that promised individual freedom but delivered mass insecurity; and second, by intentionally and repeatedly insulting the social values of the young. British culture fetishes home ownership even while its economic policies make this an increasingly distant dream for younger citizens. Young people have also borne the brunt of austerity, being saddled with university debt and suffering the closure of youth and Sure Start centres. Yet a generation that is more educated than ever but simultaneously deprived of prospects is treated with unadulterated contempt by the right. It is, after all, labelled the “snowflake generation”, which the Collins English Dictionary has defined as “the young adults of the 2010s, viewed as being less resilient and more prone to taking offence than previous generations”.On both sides of the Atlantic, the right fears a younger generation of economically insecure and socially progressive citizens. Commentators and politicians treat younger people as woke barbarians at the gates threatening to tear down everything conservatives hold dear. The moral panic over so-called “cancel culture” is a striking example of this: what it really boils down to is an attempt by millennials and zoomers to assert their progressive social values and reject the bigotries found among some older Britons and Americans. “Millennials are the silencing generation,” complains the rightwing Wall Street Journal, denouncing them as “perpetually offended” (what this perhaps really means is that younger people are less keen on demonising migrants or obsessing over the existence of trans people). “Millennials were woke enough … but the next generation is much worse,” cries the Telegraph, denouncing university students as “Stalinist foot-soldiers”. Younger people are more likely to defend the rights of the minorities bullied and harassed by rightwing politicians, and conservatives hate them for it.And so the British and US right have apparently condemned themselves to a political doom loop: savaging the progressive values of younger generations, and in doing so driving them further into the arms of the left. This bile may serve a short-term political purpose in rallying the core vote of the Tories and Republicans, but it seems that conservatives have thought little about what will happen as younger generations come of age politically and culturally. Perhaps rightwingers believed that the historic precedent of voters shifting rightwards with age would automatically assert itself, however much the young remained locked out of the prosperity their parents had enjoyed. What’s intriguing is how rightwing politicians and commentators alike have doubled down on poisonous invectives that alienate young people. Perhaps this is evidence of a fatalism: they know their fate is sealed, so nothing is to be gained from restraint.As a case in point, last week a British rightwing shock jock announced that she’d choose the life of professional misogynist Andrew Tate “over the life of a half-educated, autistic, doom-mongering eco-cultist” Greta Thunberg. Her use of autistic as an insult was indicative of an increasingly vicious rightwing culture, but the unapologetic loathing towards Thunberg – whose offence is to seek to prevent humanity from destroying itself – was revealing. Thunberg has become emblematic of progressive younger generations: the bile frequently directed at her speaks to a hatred and fear of those whom she is seen to represent.In building and benefiting from an economic model that has left younger people bereft of a secure future, and repelling them with a “culture war” against progressive values, British and US conservatism seems to be authoring its own demise. Young people voted for Margaret Thatcher’s Tories in the 1980s, but little over a fifth of voted for the party in 2019. While young Americans flocked to support Reagan in the 1980s, today their political icons are Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The political right has treated the young as the enemy within. It may soon realise what bitter harvest it has reaped as oblivion awaits.
      Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist
      TopicsPoliticsOpinionUS politicsConservativesRepublicansGreta ThunbergcommentReuse this content More

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      Could a Rishi Sunak Rise to the Top in Germany?

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      The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More

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      in US Politics

      Joe Biden calls Liz Truss tax cuts a ‘mistake’ as political fallout continues

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      Joe Biden calls Liz Truss tax cuts a ‘mistake’ as political fallout continuesUS president rejects ‘cutting taxes on the super-wealthy’ and says he is not the only world leader critical of abandoned plan00:39Joe Biden has called Liz Truss’s abandoned economic plan that sent financial markets into chaos and caused a sharp drop in the value of the pound a “mistake” as criticism of her approach continued.The US president hinted that other world leaders felt the same way about her disastrous mini-budget, saying he “wasn’t the only one” who had concerns over the lack of “sound policy” in other countries.Biden said it was “predictable” that the new British prime minister was forced on Friday to backtrack on plans to aggressively cut taxes without saying how they would be paid for, after Truss’s proposal caused turmoil in global financial markets.His comments on Sunday to reporters at an ice-cream parlour in Oregon marked a highly unusual intervention by a US president into the domestic policy decisions of one of its closest allies.“I wasn’t the only one that thought it was a mistake,” Biden said. “I think that the idea of cutting taxes on the super-wealthy at a time when … I disagree with the policy, but it’s up to Britain to make that judgment, not me.”Labour leapt on the US president’s remarks. The shadow foreign secretary, David Lammy, said: “As well as crashing the economy, Liz Truss’s humiliating U-turns have made Britain’s economy an international punchline.“President Biden knows the dangerous folly of trickle-down economics. His comments confirm the hit our reputation has taken thanks to the Conservatives.”Biden has repeatedly poured scorn on so-called trickle-down economics and before his first bilateral talks with Truss in New York last month tweeted that he was “sick and tired” of the approach, which he claimed had never worked.Mini-budget went ‘too far, too fast’, says Jeremy HuntRead moreBiden’s comments came after weeks of White House officials declining to criticise Truss’s plans, though they emphasised they were monitoring the economic fallout closely.The US president was speaking during an unannounced campaign stop for the Democratic candidate for governor, Tina Kotek. Democrats face a tough US political environment amid Republican criticism of their handling of the economy.Biden said he was not concerned about the strength of the dollar – it set a new record against sterling in recent weeks, which benefits imports but makes US exports more expensive to the rest of the world.He claimed the US economy was “strong as hell” but added: “I’m concerned about the rest of the world. The problem is the lack of economic growth and sound policy in other countries. It’s worldwide inflation, that’s consequential.”Truss’s own new chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, has said Truss and his predecessor Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget went “too far, too fast” as he effectively signalled the demise of the prime minister’s economic vision.“We have to be honest with people and we are going to have to take some very difficult decisions both on spending and on tax to get debt falling, but at the top of our minds when making these decisions will be how to protect and help struggling families, businesses and people.”Hunt is expected to announce that plans to reduce the basic rate of income tax next April will be pushed back by a year. The cut to 19% will now take effect at the time previously proposed by Rishi Sunak, the former chancellor who was Truss’s main leadership rival.TopicsUS foreign policyJoe BidenLiz TrussEconomic policyUS politicsConservativesnewsReuse this content More

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      Trump asked May at debut meeting why Boris Johnson was not PM, book says

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      Trump asked May at debut meeting why Boris Johnson was not PM, book saysFormer president reportedly asked indelicate question at White House in January 2017 when Johnson was foreign secretary In his first White House meeting with a major foreign leader, Donald Trump asked Theresa May: “Why isn’t Boris Johnson the prime minister? Didn’t he want the job?”Kushner camping tale one of many bizarre scenes in latest Trump bookRead moreAt the time, the notoriously ambitious Johnson was foreign secretary. He became prime minister two years later, in 2019, after May was forced to resign.May’s response to the undiplomatic question is not recorded in Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, a new book by the New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman which will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.Eagerly awaited, Haberman’s book has been extensively trailed. Sensational stories revealed include startling instances of Trump’s racism and transphobia and his attempt to order the bombing of drug labs in Mexico.Trump’s presidency would begin, proceed and end in chaos but in January 2017, Britain’s May was seen to have achieved an important diplomatic success by being the first foreign leader to visit Trump in the White House.Describing the meeting, Haberman cites “extensive notes of the discussion” as she reports that “for May, getting Trump to focus on any issue was impossible”.The new president, Haberman writes, bragged about the White House and talked about both the size of the crowd for his inauguration and the Women’s March, a huge national protest against him.Trump also treated May to a discourse on abortion, a hugely divisive issue in the US but less so in Britain.“Abortion is such a tough issue,” Trump said, unprompted. “Some people are pro-life, some people are pro-choice. Imagine if some animals with tattoos raped your daughter and she got pregnant?”Haberman says Trump pointed to his vice-president, Mike Pence, saying “He’s the really tough one on abortion”, then asked May “whether she was pro-life”.Again, May’s response is not reported.Trump then asked about Johnson. The former London mayor’s ambition to be prime minister was well-known, the defection of a key ally, Michael Gove, having torpedoed his hopes of succeeding David Cameron after the Brexit vote in 2016, effectively handing the job to May.Trump, Haberman writes, told the prime minister it sounded like she had a “team of rivals” – the title of a famous book about Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet – but said he could not pursue such a course.“John Kasich wanted to work for me after the election, but I couldn’t do that,” Trump said, referring to the former Ohio governor who opposed him in 2016 and after.Haberman says Northern Ireland was also discussed, though Trump “appeared to get bored” and instead talked about an offshore wind farm near one of his Scottish golf courses.He also reportedly asked if immigration had been a major factor in the Brexit vote and criticised European leaders.Telling May “crime is way up in Germany”, Trump brought up rape a second time, claiming “women are getting raped all over the place” and predicting Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, would lose an election that year.In this instance May’s response is reported: Haberman says the prime minister “contradicted” Trump, “saying that Merkel, in fact, was Europe’s best politician”.Elsewhere, Haberman reports that Trump called Merkel “that bitch”.How Donald Trump’s hand-holding led to panicky call home by Theresa MayRead moreIn the Oval Office, Haberman says, May pivoted to “one of her primary interests for the conversation – sanctions against Russia and whether Trump planned to discuss them with [Vladimir] Putin”.Told by aides he was scheduled to speak to the Russian president the next day, Trump complained that he had not yet done so, cited Russia’s nuclear arsenal and said: “I need to talk to this guy … this isn’t the Congo.”Haberman also reports what happened when president and prime minister left the Oval Office and took the steps to the White House colonnade: “appearing to need to steady himself”, Trump took May by the hand.The move caused controversy. Citing Guardian reporting, Haberman recounts the prime minister’s “bewilderment” and a call to her husband to “explain why she was holding another man’s hand”.“He just grabbed it,” May told aides. “What can I do?”TopicsBooksDonald TrumpUS politicsTheresa MayBoris JohnsonnewsReuse this content More

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      The Guardian view on moving the British embassy to Jerusalem: don’t do it | Editorial

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      The Guardian view on moving the British embassy to Jerusalem: don’t do itEditorialLiz Truss has promised a review, but relocating it would be shameful and stupid. That might not put off the prime minister – but it should Donald Trump’s relocation of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 2018 was incendiary. Widely criticised, including by the British government, it sparked protests and clashes in which Israeli security forces killed dozens of Palestinians. Though a superpower’s example offers cover to others, only four countries followed suit: Honduras, Guatemala, Kosovo – and Paraguay, which swiftly reversed course.Yet Liz Truss last week said that she was considering relocating the British embassy. The case against a move is logical, legal and practical as well as moral. East Jerusalem has been considered occupied territory under international law since the six-day war in 1967, and the future capital of a Palestinian state. Mr Trump’s proposals for an unworkable “peace plan” committed to Jerusalem as an “undivided” capital – Israel’s position. But British policy remains unchanged. Moving the embassy would tear up the commitment to any meaningful two-state solution. It would tacitly condone the march of illegal settlements. Palestinian doors would slam in the faces of diplomats, the British Council and others: longstanding suspicion of the UK has accelerated in recent years. Relations with other Middle East nations would suffer. All this for minimal, if any, benefit.The prime minister’s remarks came on the sidelines of the UN general assembly meeting where Yair Lapid voiced support for a two-state solution – the first Israeli prime minister to do so since 2017. This is a return to the rhetorical status quo ante, without either intention or ability to act upon his words, while the reality on the ground makes a peace deal ever more distant. There is no prospect of serious talks with Palestinians and minimal external pressure. While it may have been intended to sweeten his message on Iran, most have seen it in the context of November’s general election – Israel’s fifth in less than four years, and once again shaping up as a contest for and against former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu (currently favoured by polls). The thinking is that Mr Lapid hopes to encourage voters on the left to turn out or, more likely, switch to him, keeping him at the head of the anti-Bibi bloc.It may also smooth relations with Joe Biden, who hailed his remarks, but has shown little real interest in the future of Palestinians. His administration vowed to reopen the consulate in Jerusalem, which served Palestinians, and the PLO mission in Washington; neither has happened. The president’s cursory trip to East Jerusalem and Bethlehem this summer looked like cover for his meeting with Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman.Badly failed by their own leadership too, Palestinians feel not only frustrated and angry, but betrayed. Ms Truss’s review is further confirmation that they are right. Her brief tenure has already demonstrated that a policy’s badness, stupidity and unpopularity are not obstacles to embracing it: the opportunity to “challenge conformity” – ignoring officials’ warnings – may even be a spur. This is still more likely when Palestinians, rather than her own electorate, will pay. But Britain’s historical responsibilities, as well as international law, demand that it does better. It should keep the embassy in Tel Aviv, and not add to the damage already done.TopicsIsraelOpinionMiddle East and north AfricaBenjamin NetanyahuYair LapidLiz TrussUS politicsJoe BideneditorialsReuse this content More