THE urgency with which Britain’s Brexiteer elite has scrambled to cosy as much as Donald Trump within the weeks constructing as much as at this time’s inauguration has been one thing to behold. Main the best way was Nigel Farage, the previous UKIP chief, flashing a mile-wide grin as he posed for memento snaps with the president-elect. Final week Michael Gove made the identical pilgrimage. The previous justice secretary, now writing for the Occasions, may barely conceal how impressed he was by America’s macho new helmsman: beaming for a goofy, thumbs-up picture and writing up the encounter in excruciating phrases: “Mr Trump’s dialog flows like a river in spate, overwhelming interruptions and objections, reflecting the drive of nature that’s the man.”
The reflex goes all the best way to the highest: Theresa Might greeting the November election consequence with out the reserved language of, say, Angela Merkel. On January fifteenth her authorities infuriated different EU members by boycotting the Center East peace convention in Paris to curry Mr Trump’s favour. In her huge Brexit speech on Tuesday the prime minister hailed the president-elect’s speak of a immediate commerce deal as an early triumph for her “World Britain” agenda. After per week during which the tone of British-European relations has drastically soured, Mr Trump’s enthusiasm for Brexit and hostility to the EU is touted as a terrific enhance for Britain in its coming exit talks. Maybe, it’s advised, America’s new president will open the door to a brand new golden age of Anglo-Saxon friendship.
These instincts are comprehensible. The chief of the world’s solely superpower can’t simply be ignored or spurned, no matter his politics. Britain’s shut cultural, defence and safety ties with the USA imply London can play a particular function in binding the voluble and suggestible new inhabitant of the White Home into the rules-based international order. It will possibly steer him in the direction of smart positions on topics like NATO and Russia. Maybe, to invoke the outdated dictum, it may be Greece to his Rome.
The factor is, Britain’s leaders danger going past engagement and realpolitik to one thing extra craven, one thing nearer to knee-jerk sycophancy. They danger overestimating the benefits and underestimating the dangers of proximity to him.
Mr Trump’s priorities aren’t sophisticated. Brexiteers ought to count on his speak of admiring Brexit and revering the Queen to soften on first contact with the realities: Britain isn’t America’s most vital commerce companion and for 4 of the previous 5 years has offered extra to America than it has purchased from it; together with numerous stuff that would theoretically be made inside America’s borders by American employees. Up to now Mr Trump has concentrated his protectionist rabble-rousing on Germany (which he thinks can buy extra American automobiles) and most of all China. Even when Britain has been spared the verbal barbs, its surplus relationship with the USA places it in the same sensible place as these nations. An early signal of the disparity between Mr Trump’s phrases and priorities got here throughout his chat with Mr Gove. His interviewer offered an unambiguous invitation to pronounce Britain “entrance of the queue” for a commerce deal. The president-elect flanneled: “I feel you are doing nice”. It was later reported that he desires his commerce negotiators to deal with NAFTA. When he says “America First”, he means it.
There’s a broader level right here. Mr Trump’s world is one in every of muscular conflicts of curiosity; brute, zero-sum exams of leverage, self-confidence and guile. Sycophancy and flattery might purchase one a spot in his court docket however the proof suggests it comes at the price of actual affect. If he’s solicitous in the direction of Vladimir Putin it’s not as a result of the Russian president sucks as much as him (the truth is his public pronouncements have been cooly non-committal) however as a result of he’s a strongman who appears to get his approach. Mr Trump admires that. If he’s offended about China, he additionally commends its leaders’ canny insurance policies. In different phrases, he respects those that get up for his or her pursuits. That is the principle message of “The Artwork of the Deal”: “The worst factor you possibly can probably do in a deal is appear determined to make it. That makes the opposite man odor blood, and you then’re useless”; “You need to consider in your self or nobody else will”; “When someone challenges you, struggle again. Be brutal, be powerful.” All of which begs the query: may the brand new president’s early encounters with Britain’s fawning institution end up to have made him a much less, no more, accommodating companion in the long run? Why ever cede floor to a authorities that instinctively offers it up free of charge?
Whereas the potential benefits of clinging to Mr Trump could also be smaller than they first seem, the doable disadvantages are in all probability better. Unchallenged, he appears minded to threaten lots of the hardest-won achievements of current British international coverage: welcoming the disintegration of the EU (Steve Bannon, his adviser, reportedly desires to construct nearer hyperlinks with continental events selling that), weakening NATO, applauding Mr Putin’s adventurism, ripping up climate-change accords and the nuclear take care of Iran. Britain has shed blood and treasure in pursuit of those targets. Its exports to the remainder of the EU are price £171bn, in contrast with the £45bn worth of these to America. To cheer on or flip a blind eye to such vandalism within the spirit of continental one-upmanship could be totally short-sighted, doing diplomatic and financial harm that may far outlast the four- or eight-year span of Mr Trump’s presidency. Let Britain not change into Europe’s reply to Chris Christie.
This isn’t to say Mrs Might ought to search battle with Mr Trump. Removed from it. The prime minister was proper to ship two chiefs of workers to New York final month to fulfill the transition staff. She can be proper to go to Washington, D.C. early in his presidency (the dates will probably be made public quickly after at this time’s inauguration). However she ought to accomplish that whereas clarifying and sticking to sure purple strains; ideas by which she intends to conduct the partnership and guarantee it serves Britain’s pursuits. Mrs Merkel’s response to the election consequence—trying ahead to cooperation “on the idea” of “widespread values”—factors to the conditional type of friendship London ought to search. If we all know one factor about America’s vibrant new president, it’s that he doesn’t do long-term alliances or sentimental friendships. He does case-by-case offers. This transactional world, his world, will now circumscribe the transatlantic relationship. And on this world it’s higher to be revered than appreciated.
