Theresa May will find herself as hated as Trump if she sacrifices our ethics for trade deals

Perhaps we must feel sorry for Theresa May. She knows she must secure a US/UK trade deal to salvage the dignity of Brexit, even if the Brexiteers’ lust for it is confirmation of their towering stupidity

Theresa May speaks in Philadelphia during her US trip to meet President Trump (Reuters)

I’ll not mention his real name, but let’s call him Ian. Ian is British, born in Essex, and married to Samantha, from Cheshire. Ian and Samantha both work in New York. Ian, as chance would have it, is a top executive in a large media empire run by a very well-known octogenarian Australian.

At Christmas, both sets of parents came to stay at their Manhattan apartment. On Christmas all four were given the same present, which they opened simultaneously, Ian discreetly filming on his phone. They were Christmas cards, containing an ultrasound scan of their first grandchild. They were met with the standard reaction – eyes popped, tears were shed and there was a chaotic descent into group hugging.

But there were more tears at the weekend when, because Ian’s mum has an Iranian passport, she was banned from visiting her son – and banned from seeing their first grandchild.

The couple are British citizens, working in America – the kind of thing that, if talk is to be believed, will become ever more commonplace once a US/UK trade deal is in place – their lives suddenly dealt a hammer blow, for no other reason than the people of the United States have elected a baboon as President.

Now, our Foreign Secretary trumpets the fact that British citizens with dual nationality will not be subject to the President’s travel ban. That this great indignity heaped upon the people of seven seemingly arbitrarily selected nations is OK, because Britain has a get out of jail free card. Ian’s mum fled to Britain decades ago from persecution in her own country (she and her husband are both practitioners of the Baha’i faith, which if nothing else, further inhibits their jihadi tendencies), and now this.

It is only a few days since Theresa May addressed an audience of Republican politicians in Philadelphia and had the sheer audacity to tell them to “join hands as we pick up that mantle of leadership once more, to renew our Special Relationship and to recommit ourselves to the responsibility of leadership in the modern world”.

The world’s attention has perhaps never been more intently focused on the United States of America than it is now, and almost never more so on Britain. It is not looking for leadership. It is alternating between dread and laughter.

Perhaps we must feel sorry for May. She knows she must secure a US/UK trade deal to salvage the dignity of Brexit, even if the Brexiteers’ lust for it is confirmation of their towering stupidity. If free trade is de facto a good thing, substituting a newly protectionist United States for the world’s largest free trade zone that is right on our doorstep is de facto a bad thing.

She would also not be the first British prime minister of recent times to decide that there is no price too high for the preservation of the transatlantic relationship. It is why, in a break with usual protocol, policemen with automatic weapons still guard Tony Blair’s front door.

On the global stage, Donald Trump, like Britain, is an entity now respected and admired only by right-wing extremists. If Theresa May imagines her country’s reputation can be restored via the friendly offices of an international joke, her own personal credibility will not last much longer.

Political leadership is an elusive thing – as hard to understand as it is easy to recognise. Cosying up to tyrants while brokering personalised opt-outs from their own tyranny is certainly not it.