Please see my latest wire for The New York Sun, ‘Britain Itches for Freedom and a Trade Accord with Trump’s America’:
President-elect Trump is in like Flynn with America’s most enduring “special relationship.” For though his electoral victory is the cause of protests at home and unease at European capitals, “Mr. Brexit” basks in favorable reviews from the British government. Small wonder. Both nascent administrations swept to office on a wave of anti-establishment populism.Leading the welcoming party are Brexiteers who spearheaded efforts to take the United Kingdom out of the European Union and regain the sovereign powers it had ceded to the continent. UKIP’s former leader, Nigel Farage, calls Mr. Trump “instinctively Anglophile;” Britain’s foreign secretary Boris Johnson is urging EU colleagues to cease their “collective whinge-o-rama” and accept the incoming American administration. Mr. Johnson, himself New-York born, betrayed affinities for across the pond when he christened the June 23 vote for Brexit Britain’s “Independence Day.”
Prime Minister May, in an address earlier this week at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet, echoed an openness to Trump. Mrs. May, who became premier when her pro-EU predecessor David Cameron resigned following the vote for British independence, began by noting their joint brash rise to high office: she, to “forge a bold, new confident future for ourselves in the world;” Mr. Trump, “who defied the polls and the pundits all the way up to election day itself.”
So 2016 is the year of change politics and “when people demand change, it is the job of politicians to respond.” Mrs. May has reason to sympathize with Mr. Trump, as both will be contending with obstructionists.
My thanks to editor Seth Lipsky of The New York Sun.
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