Donald Trump tells us truths we don’t want to hear, by Matthew Parris.

Kissing Theresa May better after roughing her up was neither contrition nor revision. Donald Trump plays soft cop to his own hard cop. It was that first stomach-punch that was indicative. The president was right first time about a US-UK trade deal and he knows it.

The Sun headline was exactly what he intended, while the subsequent “there, there, I didn’t really mean it” should be understood as a kind of exquisite torture: as a cat plays with a mouse. Mr Trump does it because he can. …

As a Tory member I get the bumf the party cranks out to us by email, and my latest, “from” Theresa May (“Matthew — we’re taking back control”) is more nauseating than anything Donald Trump says, and by a long chalk less honest.

The email presents the post-Chequers white paper as a blueprint to a hard Brexit when even the Downing Street cat knows it’s a blueprint to a soft Brexit. So Trump is right: the Chequers white paper brings down the curtain on the hard line Brexiteers’ vision of a buccaneering Britain trading freely in the world.

hat-tip Stephen Neil