What global role should Britain aspire to?

Of all the painful moments during Theresa May’s visit to Donald Trump in late January, it was the way he took her hand for a few seconds as they walked around The White House, that felt dirtiest. Not only did it make May look like an octogenarian, unsteady on her feet, but it made Trump look part-gentleman, part-carer, part-guide, part-courter.

None of this accords well with reality. May is tough, resilient, and famously independent as a politician. Trump is neither a gentleman nor particularly caring. His interests as a guide extend only to America (and arguably only to some of it) and, when it comes to courting May, as many people pointed out at the time, she needs his attentions rather more than he needs hers.

Still, the symbolism was powerful. Having divorced one partner in June last year, we see the UK wooing an old lover, a paramour with whom we have long flirted, for whom there has always been a special place in our hearts, and to whom we have now gone running to nurse our tender wounds. He may have aged a bit, got a bit jaundiced over the years, and his domestic record may not be that much to boast about, but that is where our heart truly lies.

This is one role to which Britain might aspire, the vague threat of which has been in the air for several months now. Earlier this year, for example, the Chancellor suggested that if our erstwhile continental partner were to make it difficult for us in the divorce, we would throw ourselves into another’s arms and restructure our finances to become a low-tax, low-regulation, small-state, aggressively competitive, ‘bargain-basement’ economy. This is Britain as a kind of giant corporate tax haven, the 52^nd state lying a long way off the east coast.

This is not, we humbly submit, a model to which the majority of Britons aspire. Indeed, it is not even the model to which Philip Hammond was aspiring. His words were, after all, a threat rather than a promise. The danger is that we stumble in that direction by accident. As neither of us would have Theresa May’s job now for all the world, it feels hypocritical to offer criticism or advice but her willingness to roll out the red carpet for him (literally), coupled with her craven unwillingness to criticise his recent travel ban policy leave not only a nasty taste in the mouth but also (changing metaphors mid-sentence) set alarm bells ringing.

Yes, post-Britain Brexit needs all the friends and good will it can get, and yes, poking Trump in the ethical eye would be a strategically foolish thing to do. But the worry is that in the hasty wooing, we find ourselves edging towards a relationship that ends up being more abusive than the last one.

About the authors

Ben Ryan is a Researcher at Theos. He first joined Theos as an intern in September 2013 and graduated to a researcher in early 2014. He read Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Cambridge and also has an MSc in European Studies from the LSE European Institute. He is the author of A Very Modern Ministry: Chaplaincy in the UK.

Nick Spencer is Research Director at Theos. He is the author of several Theos reports and a number of books, including Darwin and God (SPCK, 2009) and Freedom and Order: History, Politics and the English Bible (Hodder and Stoughton, 2011) and most recently Atheists: The Origin of the Species (Bloomsbury). He is Visiting Research Fellow at the Faiths and Civil Society Unit, Goldsmiths, University of London

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