When a head of state flies in for a state visit, it’s traditional for the Foreign Secretary to lead the welcoming committee. When Donald Trump landed at Stansted airport in Air Force One, Jeremy Hunt was left waiting on the tarmac for a while. Hunt assumed that a tired Trump was ‘probably just powdering his nose’ after a long flight. It transpired, however, that the Commander-in-Chief was busy tweeting his denunciations of Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London (‘a stone-cold loser’) — thereby setting the news agenda for the day.
‘I found out almost in real time because the President told me about his tweets,’ the Foreign Secretary says, when we meet the day after. ‘I do think we have to learn from his ability to communicate,’ he adds. ‘This is the first president in history who arrives to work and the whole world knows what he’s thinking.’
But is that necessarily a good thing? ‘This is someone who puts enormous effort into communication.
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