Britain can’t afford to be seen on Trump’s side

I WAS one of the 1.8 million people who signed the petition to withdraw the invitation for a state visit by Donald Trump.

I am not – if one can make such a judgment about oneself – hysterical, as the critics of that petition would insist.

Nor am I oblivious to the government’s particularly urgent need to achieve the best possible relationship with the US for both trade and security purposes.

In fact, I am stunned with admiration at the delicacy with which Theresa May has balanced reasons of state, which require unprecedented levels of diplomatic tact, with a firm refusal to endorse Trump’s policies.

So I signed the petition even though I was fully aware that it was futile: it was, of course, inconceivable that such a retraction would ever be contemplated, even if the Brexit exigencies had not been so pressing.

But there are moments when even hopeless, symbolic gestures seem necessary if only as a statement of conscience.

When dozens of people, for whom there were no grounds for personal suspicion, were taken off aeroplanes, sometimes in handcuffs, to be detained without charge or access to legal counsel for undefined periods of time, simply on the grounds of their nationality – something snapped.

This went way beyond the standard Trump obnoxiousness and incendiary rhetoric which we might have learnt to discount. Even though one federal judge has ruled the act unlawful – and even if that ruling is eventually made definitive – it has already had real effect on real people, and it was a hideous betrayal of what America was supposed to represent.

If Trump appeals, as he has vowed, there will be a long, sordid confrontation between the White House and the courts.

There is a crucial phrase embedded in the Declaration of Independence (which is often regarded as the greatest statement of the principles of modern democracy): “all men ... are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights”.

In other words, the US founding declaration was a statement of the universal rights of man. This has traditionally been interpreted as an undertaking to defend those rights everywhere whenever they are under threat. It has been the tacit basis for American exceptionalism and the national obligation to protect civil liberties abroad as well as at home.

The recognition of those “unalienable rights” is supposed to be part of our common humanity.

The ban on refugees of all kinds was objectionable enough for a country whose moral mission was to be a haven for the persecuted and the destitute (perhaps I feel this most strongly because my own grandparents arrived on Ellis Island at the turn of the last century as refugees from the Russian pogroms).

That brings me to the salient point for the British government. For once I actually find myself agreeing with a statement that Ed Miliband made. In the Commons debate on Article 50, he said that Brexit meant Brexit, but “Brexit doesn’t mean Trump”. May has gone a long way to persuading everybody that she has real influence over the president. She got that famous, publicly reiterated assurance that he supported Nato “one hundred percent”, after all. But how much is such a commitment worth from a man whose behaviour is so erratic and inappropriate for high office?

Last week, he used the occasion of a White House prayer breakfast, (an event ordinarily treated with reverence by presidents – to demonstrate respect for the many creeds which co-exist in American society), to ridicule his successor’s ratings on a reality television show.

Do I need to point out that religious observance is taken very seriously in the US?

I doubt that Trump knows anything of the kind, but he could now, after that helpful bit of oratory act, as if he does. Will he? Won’t he? Who knows?

The lesson has to be obvious for a British government about to leave the European Union: do not associate yourself with this presidency. Present yourself as a “bridge”, maybe – so long as the Trump administration remains tenable – but not as an agent or an apologist. This is not hysteria. It is cold, rational advice.

More than ever, at this point in its history, the UK cannot afford to be portrayed as defending the indefensible. –

“Brexit meant Brexit, but Brexit doesn’t mean Trump