We’ve upset Japan, China and Bangladesh this week alone – post-Brexit Britain won’t have any trade links at this rate

‘Global Britain’ now apparently means making silly gestures and pretending to be more powerful than we are, at enormous cost to our economic well-being

One of the many unintended consequences of Brexit is that “Global Britain” seems curiously friendless. We have proved remarkably inept at “taking back control” of our foreign policy, though the British fancy themselves as expert negotiators and diplomats (they’re even offering paid courses in it).

We are, in fact, losing friends we will dearly need in future.

The latest example is Bangladesh. Now, I realise that Bangladesh is hardly a superpower, but then again neither is Britain. That doesn’t really matter. What matters is that the British home secretary, Sajid Javid, stupidly decided to revoke Shamima Begum’s British citizenship on the assumption that she would be eligible for Bangladeshi citizenship instead – but without consulting the Bangladeshi authorities about whether they wanted her as a citizen.

Predictably enough, they didn’t. Thus did the British government render her stateless in an almost carless fashion. Thus did Britain breach international law. Thus did the Home Office gift Begum – no-one’s notion of an ideal citizen of anywhere – a strong case for substantial compensation for the abuse of her human rights.

Between the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, we have botched even this comparatively minor exercise in effective foreign policy.

Other fiascos are more serious. Japan, for example. Having sent decades building as strong, confident relationship with the Japanese as their principal parent in Europe, on the expectation that we would be members of the European Union and enjoy stable government, we have now comprehensively trashed our relations with the third biggest economy in the world.

Japan’s diplomats, highly unusually, let it be known they were miffed and bewildered to receive a letter from Jeremy Hunt and Liam Fox that told them to get a move on with the UK-Japan trade deal, the one we will need if we crash out on 29 March.

Being told to get their act together by these two, the Japanese might have been forgiven for thinking that the British were turning a little hypocritical, if not mad. Brexit has broken their trust in the UK. It is difficult to see how it could be rebuilt.

Still more difficult are our relations with the world’s second largest economy, China. Again, successive British governments have been to and fro Beijing trying to build up our pitifully small trade with the country, buttering up the leadership and generally trying to flog them more Range Rovers and bottles of Scotch.

But then along comes Gavin Williamson, absurdly, vowing to send our one and only aircraft carrier to the South China Sea, which the Chinese basically regard as theirs, all theirs.

Global Britain apparently means making silly gestures and pretending to be more powerful than we are, at enormous cost to our economic well-being. No wonder they told the chancellor, Philip Hammond to postpone his planned goodwill trip. Once again three departments of state – the FCO, HM Treasury and the Ministry of Defence combined to send badly mixed messages. If there is a cabinet committee on foreign policy it is either not doing its job properly or doing it very badly indeed.

This leaves our relations with the EU, which can never be as close as they are now. No divorce is ever as amicable as the former partners would wish, and this is no exception. Our EU neighbours feel bewildered and abandoned by the UK, and regret what is happening for our sake as well as theirs.

We have lost the important bargaining power and close relationships we once enjoyed with Ireland and Spain over vital national interests in Northern Ireland and Gibraltar, quite apart from routine EU support at the UN on contentious matters. The Poles and Lithuanians dislike what we are going to do to their ex pat citizens.

The Germans don’t understand what is going on. Where once the EU was “family”, on the contrary, we now find ourselves in a more and more uneasy relationship with our largest trading partner and strategic allies. We will lose, most likely, access to intelligence and security planning as well as crucial export markets whichever way Brexit goes.

Donald Trump's protectionist America doesn’t seem likely to become our firm and steadfast ally either. The “special relationship” always meant more on the British side of the Atlantic, and most Americans have, truth to tell, never heard of it, and, if they have would think it refers to Saudi Arabia or Israel.

This president already said that the current Brexit deal precludes a trade deal with the US. Even if there was one they’d demand we take their chlorinated chickens in return for opening up their markets.

And Trump has also made it perfectly clear he is more than a little bored of having to have US forces defend Europe, begging the question for the first time since 1941, would the United States really send their boys to die to save Britain from the Russians?

And, of course, our relations with Vladimir Putin could hardly be worse, and those with the likes of Iran and Saudi Arabia are pretty awkward (not that these failures, for obvious reasons, can be fairly blamed on the British government).

Reductions in overseas aid spending, constantly demanded by the Tory hard right, should finish off whatever other goodwill we enjoy in the developing world.

The thought, then, occurs that, insofar as he is supposed to be running foreign policy and co-ordinating the disparate efforts of different departments Hunt might actually be worse than Boris Johnson. It’s a funny old world.