He insulted London’s mayor, abused an American actor on Twitter at 1.20am, turned Brexit into a threat to the National Health Service, described Meghan Markle as nasty, and behaved as if he was a kingmaker offering audiences to aspirants from the 51st state, and yet to Whitehall’s diplomats Donald Trump’s state visit was by no means the worst in living memory.

It may be that the bar had been set vertiginously low, or that Trump, as a repeat visitor, has lost some of his capacity for shock and awe. Somehow, it seemed tame and normalised in comparison with his previous disastrous visit a year ago. Even the protests felt familiar, and like Trump’s insults aimed at Sadiq Khan, heartfelt but formulaic.

It may also have been that the day devoted to politics was squeezed between the Queen’s pageantry and the solemnity of the D-day 75 anniversary commemorations, but Tuesday’s joint May-Trump press event, by the cartwheeling madness of some of his previous performances, was relatively tame. Faced by the power vacuum that is contemporary Britain, Trump himself seemed deflated.

True, Trump blundered by saying the NHS would be “on the table” in any “phenomenal” trade deal – and it is extraordinary that even the current caretaker Downing Street operation was unable to warn him off such a rookie error after the US ambassador in London, Woody Johnson, made exactly the same mistake three days earlier.

It is a phrase that is going to haunt Brexiters, however quickly Trump later tried to retract his claim in his Piers Morgan interview. More seriously the whole episode just confirmed that a bilateral trade deal was far off, hard to negotiate and would be no substitute for the UK’s lost access to EU markets. Even Nigel Farage seemed alarmed after meeting Trump at the lack of substantive progress on a deal.

But on the other high-level diplomatic issues, the two sides averted some of the worst pitfalls. Even in praising Brexit – described as necessary because Britain, “a great place”, wants its own identity - the president refrained from attacking the European Union.

This self-restraint was only marred when he reached Ireland and told the Irish that a wall necessitated by Brexit would be “very, very good for Ireland”.

May also pre-empted a row over Nato by being the first to call for greater burden sharing on defence spending.

By his standards, Trump was personally courteous towards her, describing May as a tremendous professional and a better negotiator than him. Last year in an interview he said contemptuously she did not listen to him on how to handle Brexit.

May delivered a strong message on the need to avoid escalation in Iran, and in private the Trump team insisted his goal was not war or the removal of “the world’s leading state sponsor of terror”, but instead to pressurise the country’s president, Hassan Rouhani, to open talks. Britain is one of the many mediators on offer.

The issue of Huawei – so sensitive since it goes to the heart of the intelligence relationship on which everything rests – was also defused by the British making clear that any decision awaits the next prime minister. Trump also buried the row by saying: “We have an incredible intelligence relationship and we will be able to work out any differences.” But that does not mean the dispute itself is anything but deferred.

British and American attitudes to China are fundamentally at odds, and Britain is determined to push the argument that its telecommunications architecture is different to others.

All the while, the British managed either through the Queen’s remarks, a copy of the 1941 Atlantic Treaty or the sealed signed D-day proclamation, to smuggle in subtle references to the value of alliances, cooperation and the values of democracy.

In any other context, the gifts and rhetoric might seem humdrum to the point of bland, but faced by a politician that has been described as “conducting an unprecedented and multifaceted experiment in the application of brute force” it seemed brave.

But for the moment Trump’s verdict on Britain’s future relevance is on hold, awaiting its choice of new prime minister and the Brexit course the country finally takes.