Theresa May briefly had my sympathy last week. She was in Portsmouth to celebrate the fact that Britain’s new £3bn floating table had made it all the way round from Scotland without sinking or chipping a bit off Kent or being towed away by the Russians. It was supposed to be a happy event – a lovely huge weapon of war. Of course we all hope it’ll never have to be used to kill people. It works out a lot cheaper if you just use it to threaten to kill them.

“What on earth am I going to say,” she must have asked herself and her aides, “about what Donald Trump said about the events in Charlottesville? People are going to insist I say something about that. We need to think long and hard to find a form of words that will keep me out of trouble without sounding like they’ve been thought long and hard about to keep me out of trouble.”

A tricky position, I’m sure you’ll agree. Actually, I’m not sure you’ll agree. You may believe politicians should just say what they think. Enough of the spin, enough of the evasion: out with it. In which case, you may be a fan of Donald Trump, because that’s what he does.

May didn’t actually slag him off. She asserted a contrary view, but didn’t then say: '…President Trump is wrong and bad'

Apart from a brief interlude on Monday in which he glumly read something out about Nazis being bad, Trump’s response to the violence caused by an extreme rightwing rally has been to share the blame equally between the KKK-sympathising, neo-Nazi, antisemitic-slogan-chanting torch-wielders and those who protested against them. It’s broadly equivalent to making the occupants of the World Trade Center accept half the responsibility for 9/11 on the basis that they got in the way.

This is difficult stuff to agree with, even for Theresa May, whose mouth spouts so much horseshit you’d think her anus gobbled oats. Obviously she wants to agree with Donald Trump – before she’s heard what he’s said, that must always be what she hopes she’ll be able to do. He’s in charge of the world’s most powerful country, and Britain, having just alienated history’s most powerful continent, needs friends. And, indeed, Theresa May, having just screwed up her party’s political position with a horrendously misjudged and mismanaged election, also needs friends.

And he’s held her hand, and he’s coming on a state visit, and he says he’ll do us a lovely trade deal, and he’s also a deeply vain, hypersensitive megalomaniac who takes all slights extremely personally. So it would be really good to be able to just agree with him. Then they can be like Thatcher and Reagan – or at least like the people who might play Thatcher and Reagan in a low-budget TV movie. Or actually on the radio.

But Trump has said something with which nobody reasonable could agree. Literally the only people who agree are white supremacists. So she can’t agree with him and, please excuse a bit of moist-eyed romanticism, I suspect she genuinely doesn’t agree with him. No one would say Theresa May was overburdened with integrity but I do reckon she’s sincerely anti-Nazi. When she went into politics, she probably didn’t expect her anti-Nazi views to place many limits on her political career. How times change.

So she said she disagreed with him. Sort of. She stood on our one measly aircraftless aircraft carrier and contradicted the horrible man who’s commander-in-chief of at least 10. “I see no equivalence between those who propound fascist views and those who oppose them. I think it is important for all those in positions of responsibility to condemn far-right views wherever we hear them,” she said, probably worrying it would mean we’ll now have to sell the carrier. And the first-year depreciation on those things is a killer. You mark my words: one of the UAE will snap it up for a nine-figure sum and it’ll end its days as an enormous swim-up casino.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Illustration by David Foldvari.

But May didn’t actually slag off Trump. She asserted a contrary view, but she didn’t then say: “…and so President Trump is wrong and bad”. Which gave Jeremy Corbyn the opportunity to complain: “Theresa May cannot remain silent while the US president refuses categorically to denounce white supremacists and neo-Nazi violence.” I don’t blame him – that’s politics and it’s a lovely opportunity. Now, if she doesn’t condemn Trump, she’s “remaining silent” and if she does, she’s bowing to pressure from the opposition.

So I sympathise with May. Would her having a pop at Trump do any good? By, say, making clear what this country stands for – “The UK: very gradually phasing out racism since the abolition of the slave trade!” – or marginally weakening the position of a bad American president? It’s possible, but it might not. It might have achieved no more than messing up a cushy trade deal.

In some ways, the shock at Trump’s remarks surprises me. I suppose I can understand it coming from Republicans. They’re the ones who either believed, or hoped others would believe, that Trump, while a maverick, was broadly on the side of civilisation. They thought the popular forces he called into being with his artless demagoguery could be harnessed in the service of their own more conventionally conservative agenda. Now they’re starting to feel like Von Papen.

But I think, for Trump’s opponents, his response to Charlottesville is good news. Let his remarks stand – let him continue to speak from the heart, as I believe he has here. Many have said he’s a Nazi sympathiser – now he’s openly sympathising with Nazis.

Up until now, Trump’s “gaffes” and lies – moments when he’s mocked a disabled person or expressed contempt for women – have done him little harm, and sometimes a bit of good. He was different from the politically correct, mainstream politicians that the American electorate had become accustomed to, and millions mistook that difference for something refreshing. It was a change and they misread it as an improvement.

But I don’t believe this view can survive long while he’s openly defending those who consort with neo-Nazis and the KKK, and showing suspicion for people who oppose them. Too many Americans, conservative and liberal, fought in the second world war for that; too many saw the realities of segregation. And if I’m wrong, and the Trump who spoke out against the “very violent” “alt-left” on Tuesday remains a popular hero, then the US is already lost and has been for some time.