Welcome words from John Bolton on post Brexit trade prospects

John Bolton, who is Donald Trump’s national security advisor, was pointedly rejecting the approach of President Barack Obama’s remark that the Britain would be “at the back of the queue” to negotiate a trade deal. That comment, made on a visit to the UK in 2016, ahead of the referendum is thought to have increased public support for Brexit.

Mr Bolton said that the president was “eager for the will of the British people to be carried out, and he is even more eager to do a trade deal”.

Mr Trump is a longstanding supporter of Brexit. He cited it often in his election rallies prior to winning the 2016 presidential victory. His victory, like that of Brexit itself, upended much of the conventional wisdom on western politics.

But it is hard not to hear Mr Bolton’s warm words of encouragement for an ally that he and Mr Trump both greatly admire, Britain, and not feel frustration at the failure of Downing Street to capitalise on such goodwill.

It is all the more urgent they do given how the Irish government is behaving. Leo Varadkar showed EU leaders images of violence at the frontier in the 1970s. Britain should have made clear that it had to try to combat such Irish republican terrorism, with precious little help from the Republic.

Then Mr Varadkar implied that Mr Trump supported the backstop. Really? Does Mr Bolton too?

Perhaps the UK should take a leaf from Mr Varadkar’s book, and show those two men images of bombs across Northern Ireland, and remind them why there was once such a heavily policed border.

With an academic saying that any hard border will be removed, and the Irish American senator Chris Murphy saying that there will be no UK-US trade deal without a backstop, it is high time London forcefully pushed its own case on Brexit.