Yvette Cooper was all smiles as she greeted Donald Trump on his arrival in Britain – despite her having previously labelled the US President ‘ignorant’ and ‘dangerous’.
The Foreign Secretary met Mr Trump and his wife, Melania, after they stepped off Air Force One at London Stansted airport last night.
RAF personnel from The King’s Colour Squadron also formed a guard of honour as the US President arrived for his historic second state visit to the UK.
But the warm welcome afforded to Mr Trump by Ms Cooper was a far cry from her past comments about the Republican politician.
Similar to David Lammy, her predecessor as Foreign Secretary, Ms Cooper was a frequent critic of Mr Trump during his first term in the White House.
She branded him ‘disgraceful’ and ‘irresponsible’ at a time when Labour were in opposition.
Ms Cooper also claimed Mr Trump had built his first campaign for the US presidency on ‘vitriol and abuse’, as she also hit out at ‘aggressive misogyny’ and ‘xenophobia’.
She even hit out at the previous Tory government for giving Mr Trump a ‘red carpeted’ welcome to Britain during his first state visit in June 2019.
‘Doesn’t help Britain to be lavishing pomp on a President so determined to be divisive, childish & destructive,’ she posted on social media at the time.
Now she is installed in the Foreign Office – and following her warm greeting for Mr Trump on Tuesday – critics noted that Ms Cooper had made a ‘full recovery’ from ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’.
Yvette Cooper was all smiles as she greeted Donald Trump on his arrival in Britain – despite her having previously labelled the US President ‘ignorant’ and ‘dangerous’
The Foreign Secretary met Mr Trump and his wife, Melania, after they stepped off Air Force One at London Stansted airport last night
RAF personnel from The King’s Colour Squadron also formed a guard of honour as the US President arrived for his historic second state visit to the UK
In one social post written by Ms Cooper, from July 8, 2017, little more than six months after Mr Trump’s first inauguration, she claimed: ‘We are forgetting to be disturbed by Trump, he is normalising hatred and it’s dangerous’.
She also quoted from her speech to The Fabians think tank, in which she said: ‘The leader of the free world built his campaign for the presidency on vitriol and abuse.
‘The aggressive misogyny, the violent language towards Hillary Clinton, the Islamophobia, the xenophobia, the hatred.
‘And he hasn’t stopped since he got into the Oval Office.’
Ms Cooper added of Mr Trump’s social media posts attacking the media and the US judiciary: ‘These aren’t just harmless rants from a sad man in his bedroom.
‘This is the bully pulpit of the most powerful man on the planet.’
Ms Cooper had also been a fierce critic of Mr Trump prior to his first successful election campaign.
After Mr Trump called for a ‘a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the US’, Ms Cooper posted on Twitter on 8 December 2015: ‘Appalled by the ignorant & islamophobic statement from Trump.
‘He may like to shock, but this isn’t a game, it is irresponsible & dangerous.’
In another of her posts, from 14 February, 2017, Ms Cooper referred to the Trump administration’s ‘unstable behaviour’ regarding Russia and said that it ‘must surely alarm’ then-prime minister Theresa May.
She added: ‘Raises real issues for security cooperation’.
Of the then-Tory premier, she again wrote on 13 July, 2018: ‘Trump’s appalling behaviour makes me sympathise with Theresa May.’
But Ms Cooper then went on to tell Mrs May to ‘stand up’ to Mr Trump.
‘Til I remember her desperate rush to invite him, her repeated reluctance to criticise his Muslim ban or caging of children, her chasing him for a bad trade deal…For God’s sake Theresa, stand up to him today,’ she added.
In a separate post, Ms Cooper referred to Mr Trump’s ‘unleashing of white supremacists’.
She wrote on 15 August, 2017: ‘Trump unleashing of white supremacists in US is beyond awful, but problem not just him when prejudice & hatred so often fanned and fueled.’
On 3 June 2019, Ms Cooper lashed out at the welcome afforded to Mr Trump on his first state visit to Britain, during which he clashed with Labour’s London mayor Sadiq Khan.
She posted: ‘So appalled Theresa May has given this man a red carpeted platform to do this.
‘Doesn’t help Britain to be lavishing pomp on a President so determined to be divisive, childish & destructive.
‘Doesn’t help US or world to be gifting him a whole load of Royal photo ops to use next yr.’
Mr Lammy, who was Foreign Secretary until he was replaced by Ms Cooper in a Cabinet reshuffle earlier this month, was also an outspoken critic of Mr Trump during his first term in the White House.
In November last year, Mr Lammy attempted to brush off the impact of his past criticism of Mr Trump.
He insisted he had a good relationship with the returning US President, despite having once branded him a ‘woman-hating, neo-Nazi sympathising sociopath’.
Mr Lammy came under fire over tweets he made while he was an opposition MP, in which he said Mr Trump was a ‘tyrant in a toupee’ and lacked the brains to pass GCSE exams.
But Mr Lammy last year branded the social media posts ‘old news’, telling the BBC: ‘I think that what you say as a backbencher and what you do wearing the the real duty of public office are two different things.
‘And I am Foreign Secretary. There are things I know now that I didn’t know back then, and that’s the truth of it.’
