Opinions will vary about the qualities and policies of “Make America Great Again”, president-elect, Trump. He puts me in mind of Palmerston.
Of course Trump is unlikely to be an Irish Peer, as Palmerston was, but Pam as he was affectionately known had a similar outlook on foreign policy to Trump. I’d like to think Trump studies Pam’s playbook but I have seen little evidence he reads anything except an autocue. Although he did go to school, significantly in 2015 he threatened to take legal action against the school and colleges he attended if they published his academic records. Pam went to Harrow and St John’s, Cambridge. At the latter, as a nobleman, he was not required to sit exams to gain his degree. He unsuccessfully tried to circumvent this privilege but was able to take college exams in which he was awarded first class honours. An interesting piece of trivia comparing him to Trump is that Palmerston escaped an assassination attempt with only a graze in 1818 when he was Secretary at War, a post abolished in 1863.
Pam summed up his foreign policy in a speech to the House of Commons in 1848. “We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.” In the 19th century Great Britain was great and Palmerston wanted to keep it that way. Last month, again in the House of Commons, Sir Iain Duncan Smith said “in 2023, the FCDO (Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office) received 188 new allegations of torture and mistreatment from British nationals overseas. It goes on and on. Arbitrary detention and hostage-taking are devastating, but are practised by a number of regimes, chief among those being Iran.” IDS is no Palmerston. Pam’s foreign policy became known as gunboat diplomacy and he didn’t put up with any nonsense from foreign governments that infringed the rights of British subjects.
The case of Don David Pacifico, a British Jew living in Athens, comes to mind. Palmerston characteristically was on his feet in 1850 in the Commons declaring, “as the Roman, in days of old, held himself free from indignity, when he could say Civis Romanus sum; so also a British subject, in whatever land he may be, shall feel confident that the watchful eye and the strong arm of England will protect him against injustice and wrong”. He followed up by seizing the Greek navy, such as it was, and blockading Piraeus until, after two months, the King of Greece (Otto) and his government agreed to compensate Don Pacifico.
Historian, Norman Gash, sums Palmerston up.
“Fundamentally he was a professional politician, shrewd, cynical, resilient; tough and sometimes unscrupulous; quick to seize opportunities; always ready either to abandon an impossible cause or bide his time for a more favourable opportunity. He liked power, he needed his salary, he enjoyed office, he worked hard. In later life he took an increasing pleasure in the game of politics, and ultimately became an adroit and successful prime minister…. in the end he became one of the great Victorian public personalities, a legend in his own lifetime, the personification of an England that was already passing away.”
Palmerston’s vigorous promotion of British interests abroad made him wildly popular with voters and may go some way to explain why Donald Trump has twice been voted President of an America that may too pass away in the relentless shift of geopolitical tectonic plates.
In comparing Trump to Palmerston you could have used Disraeli’s saying. When told that Palmerston had a mistress at 70, he warned against publicising it as if evidence of his potency he would sweep the country.