Many layers of humiliation
Julian Borger wonders how that “special relationship” is going these days.
It was some poor official’s job this morning to tell Theresa May that while she slept, the relationship with the US became special for all the wrong reasons.
It is at least historic. No US president in modern times has addressed a UK prime minister with the open peevishness and contempt of Donald Trump’s tweet telling May to mind her own business.
He’s draining the swamp.
There are many layers of humiliation here for May to get her head around over breakfast. Not only is it personally demeaning, it is also politically toxic.
The prospect of a successful or at least survivable Brexit is posited on a strong relationship with Washington. In that regard, May’s successful rush to Washington in January to become the first foreign leader received at the Trump White House was presented as a coup.
Under EU rules, the two countries are not allowed even to start negotiating a trade deal until the UK is truly out of Europe, but the warm words and the pictures of the Trump and May holding hands at least struck an encouraging tone. The prime minister got to Washington in time to help the state department and Congress stop the president lifting sanctions on Russia, and squeezed out of him his first grudging words of support for Nato.
But after that it was all ↓↓↓
So what now? May and Europe want to salvage the nuclear deal with Iran that Trump wants to destroy, and they also agree on not getting into the jolly little nuclear war with North Korea which Trump is doing his best to set off.
The irony is that it is just such European unity of purpose that May is committed to undermine. Having a US president who is so erratic and extreme that he makes disagreements with EU seem petty by comparison is a bad look for a prime minister championing Brexit.
Tragic, isn’t it. The Brexit vote happened before Trump was nominated.
Can we do 2016 over again?
I’ve always felt vaguely guilty, on a cultural level, about Trump… The UK makes the single stupidest political decision of my lifetime, and evidently the United States didn’t feel they could let us have that accolade. In the spirit of always having to be bigger, better, and crazier, they elected the Apricot Hell Beast, secure in the knowledge that no other country, would be able to top it.
Yes, unlike Brexit Trump is of global significance. Unless the president of China becomes barking mad, the US is a clear winner in the race to Armageddon.
Brexit not of global significance? Hush yo mouth! It will restore Britain to her rightful place as Ruler of the Globe, which she was cruelly robbed of by all those dirty furriners coming here and diluting our pure Anglo-Saxon blood. I know because that nice Mr Farage and his friends keep saying so.
[I greet you from a country racing to second world status].
That’s ok, Steamshovelmama, the US is trying to go straight to third world status…and likely to achieve it, thanks to the orange menace.
Huh, has to be said that the Empire was actually a pretty tired and hollowed out edifice by the time WW2 rolled around. Just a case of no-one having really noticed before then. Classic case of resting on ones laurels. The reality is that even in the 1980’s, the UK could barely kick Argentinean conscripts out of a fly speck in the Atlantic, let alone control half the World as they once did. I suspect even the US, with a military bigger that the next 10 (?) biggest combined would struggle to build a matching empire these days (assuming you don’t want it to glow in the dark, which would be a bit pyrrhic).
@3
Yes, I’ve noticed even British Left wing commentators claiming that Brexit is of ‘global significance’.
I had some conversations with British immigrants here in Australia in the 1970s when the UK joined the EEC, they had quite inflated ideas of Britain’s resources and role in WW2. They were convinced that Britain would dominate the EU, a new Empire. The assumption was that they represented some kind of imperial rump, apparently not, the notion seems very durable. The right wing in Britain has the almost comical conviction that the Commonwealth is out there somewhere, waiting for Mother to come back, it isn’t.
That said, Britain’s gift to its settler colonies is its institutions, compare the history of the English speaking nations to those in Latin America. The comparative history of Australia and Argentina is very instructive.
Be optimistic Steamshovelmama, the so-called ‘referendum’ was really a plebiscite, there’s a chance that the entire Brexit circus will just fade away.
iknklast,
I realise Trump is a nightmare, however he won’t be in power for ever.
@ Rob.
No shit.
The UK’s political dominance was over by 1950 – the remnants of the Empire were dismantled as part of WWII – in fact it has been quite seriously argued that the British Empire and its dismantling provided the manpower to win the war. (OK, it also led to multiple countries being partitioned with a ruler and thus multiple bloody internecine conflicts, many of which are still raging today… It’s probably not true that this was deliberate policy to keep ex-colonies fighting each other rather than us…)
However, we have been a global financial centre and a global education and research centre. We have the 5th largest global economy and are a G5 nation.
Or we did. Brexit is going to knock all of that down. Much of the funding for the world class research which supports world class universities comes from the EU. Financial institutions which have called the City of London their home for a hundred years or more are pulling out because they’ll get better deals and be closer to the centre of power in an EU country – probably Germany. Lose all that and our economy looks set to tank spectacularly.
It’s looking increasingly likely that we will crash out of Brexit with no deal. We haven’t started recruiting and training the personnel we need to replace EU customs and monitoring roles – so even if we do just pass the whole of EU legislation into UK law we don’t have the people to keep it moving. There are regulatory issues with so many things that have been the purview of Brussels that keep cropping up as a surprise. For instance, there are regulatory issues with UK planes that noone is addressing – if the problem (and I can’t remember the exact details) isn’t sorted then UK planes will be unable to fly in EU airspace.
And, oh god, the border with Eire… it’s an insoluble problem, in a trouble spot we’d only just started to get on top of. No one has a single damned idea of how to deal with it in a way that fulfills EU hard border requirements and doesn’t leave us with six inches of blood in the streets again.
So we have definitely been a first world country up to today. Second world status along the lines of Greece seems to be beckoning…
@Iknklast
Nah, the US seems to be making a determined effort to reach “Germany in the 30s”.
Of course, if no one stops Trump bombing North Korea then all bets are off. In that case the global geopolitical landscape will be something we can’t even imagine now. If China gets really pissed then US third world status could be a real thing…
With all this Brexit talk I am reminded of the famous “Yes Minister” sequence on the EU and Britain’s role.
For anyone who doesn’t know it (what? Go and obtain copies! It is one of the finest – if not the finest political comedy ever) “Yes Minister” was a sit com that ran in the early 80s. It was a three hander played between the Right Honourable James Hacker MP, the hapless and slightly innocent cabinet minister at the Department for Administrative Affaiirs, his Permanent Private Secretary, experienced and scheming Whitehall Mandarin, Sir Humphrey Appleby, and his junior high-flying civil service aide, the slightly naive Bernard Woolley.
In the episode “The Writing on the Wall” Hacker and Sir Humphrey discuss the EU and Britain’s involvement. Like much of “Yes Minister” it remains surprisingly relevant…
Sir Humphrey: Minister, Britain has had the same foreign policy objective for at least the last 500 years: to create a disunited Europe. In that cause we have fought with the Dutch against the Spanish, with the Germans against the French, with the French and Italians against the Germans, and with the French against the Germans and Italians. Divide and rule, you see. Why should we change now, when it’s worked so well?
Hacker: That’s all ancient history, surely?
Sir Humphrey: Yes, and current policy. We had to break the whole thing [the EEC] up, so we had to get inside. We tried to break it up from the outside, but that wouldn’t work. Now that we’re inside we can make a complete pig’s breakfast of the whole thing: set the Germans against the French, the French against the Italians, the Italians against the Dutch… The Foreign Office is terribly pleased; it’s just like old times.
Hacker: But surely we’re all committed to the European ideal?
Sir Humphrey: [chuckles] Really, Minister.
Hacker: If not, why are we pushing for an increase in the membership?
Sir Humphrey: Well, for the same reason. It’s just like the United Nations, in fact; the more members it has, the more arguments it can stir up, the more futile and impotent it becomes.
Hacker: What appalling cynicism.
Sir Humphrey: Yes… We call it diplomacy, minister.
I was a fan. I’m sure in one episode, Sir Humphey, makes an indiscrete remark and refers to Britain’s ‘Common Market enemies”.
Global ranking is sometimes deceptive. Compared to China, or the US there’s an enormous gap between 5 and number one or two. India is also developing rapidly. Number 5 will have about as much significance as number 150.
I did enjoy that series…
‘what? Go and obtain copies! It is one of the finest – if not the finest political comedy ever’
When I started working on transport strategy in England a decade or so ago my boss literally made me sit down and watch the DVDs of this, to get caught up on what I could expect to be dealing with. Another of my colleagues in that job was apparently one of the people Sir Humphrey was modelled after, and he used to swear that ‘yes it was just like that.’