As the US President abandons Ukraine to Vladimir Putin’s invading armies, Trump’s long-standing defenders in the UK are now desperately seeking to distance themselves from him.
For years Boris Johnson was Trump’s main defender on this side of the Atlantic.
In Parliament and on the pages of the British press, Johnson repeatedly mocked Trump’s critics as being “puffed up pompous popinjays”, who were engaged in a “whingearama” about the President.
Even after Trump’s disastrous first term in office, Johnson continued to defend him, insisting that his re-election in 2024 would make the world a “safer” and “more stable” place.
Yet after two years of abject chaos and betrayal, Johnson has finally been forced to admit that he was wrong, describing the US President’s betrayal of Ukraine as “sickening”.
He’s not the only one. Across politics and the media, many of Trump’s most committed British apologists are now finally being forced to admit that his critics were right all along.
On Friday the Daily Mail published a front page piece promoting a piece by long-standing Trump cheerleader Richard Littlejohn, describing the US President as being “toast”. Similar pieces have appeared right across the right-wing press in the UK.
So is this a genuine turnaround or something far more cynical, and why is it only now that they’ve started to publicly admit what everyone else knew all along?
Here’s what I think is really going on.