Alex Massie writes for the Spectator, the Times and other publications.

On Friday, British Prime Minister Theresa May will become the first foreign leader to visit Donald Trump in Washington since he became president. With a nod to Trump’s Scottish bloodlines, the prime minister is expected to present him with a quaich, a two-handled ceremonial cup traditionally used for drinking whisky that is supposed to be a token of trust and friendship. Whether the teetotaler Trump will appreciate this gesture is one thing; whether that trust and friendship can actually be established is entirely another.

The special relationship, after all, is in a very special quandary. Trump’s “America First” rhetoric has horrified almost all of America’s traditional European allies. His suggestion that NATO is “obsolete” and his happiness to countenance the complete collapse of the European Union threatens to abandon more than a half-century of U.S. foreign policy. Even though Trump has endeared himself to the Brexiteers, who cheered his recent declaration that Britain was “so smart” to leave the EU, Trump is far less popular in Britain than even George W. Bush was at his worst. During the campaign, May herself complained that Trump’s rhetoric about Muslims was “divisive, unhelpful and wrong”; one of her chiefs of staff called Trump a “chump,” and the other said he had no interest in “reaching out” to Trump.


Yet, May can no longer ignore The Donald. Unless you’re Vladimir Putin, you deal with the American president you have, not the one you might like to have in the Oval Office—that’s the starting point for every international leader in the Age of Trump. In fact, May, who is herself new to international politics, may need to lean on the United States more than other prime ministers did. Having voted this summer to abandon the European Union, the British must cling tightly to their Anglophone alliances and trade partnerships.

All this puts May in an impossible spot: How can she endear herself to her most powerful foreign partner when he is loathed in her own country, and many of its longtime European partners? This is a high-risk business, with huge potential for humiliation.

True, there are risks for Trump. If he cannot establish a strong working relationship with Britain, his chances of doing so with any other country (well, except maybe Russia) must be reckoned negligible. A meeting with the British prime minister is, as far as Trump is concerned, diplomacy steadied with training wheels. If he still falls, it will be telling. Americans and foreigners alike will further doubt his statesmanship, and his less-than-steady start in office could get even shakier.

The dangers for May, however, are more significant. It’s not just the clash between Britain’s national interest, which demands a good working relationship with the new American administration, and its national pride, which demands that she keep her distance from Trump. Making matters more awkward is the fact Trump thrives on, and indeed may only respond to, unctuous flattery. May, who has relished being described as “a bloody difficult woman,” is at risk of seeming Trump’s patsy. At the Republicans’ congressional retreat in Philadelphia on Thursday, she already seemed to go all-in for Trump, declaring that it was an honor to be present as “dawn breaks on a new era of American renewal.” “Haven’t you noticed? Opposites attract,” she quipped earlier to reporters. If May has to eat an uncommonly gristly sandwich, then so be it.

Brexit adds a further complication. President Barack Obama infuriated pro-Brexit Britons over the summer when he suggested that leaving the European Union would relegate Britain to “the back of the queue” for any further U.S. trade deals. Trump, by contrast, has said a one-on-one U.S.-UK deal can be done quickly, and that Britain is “at the front of the line.” Pro-Brexit British conservatives are determined to see in Trump a man with whom they can do business. (One cabinet minister told the Spectator, “Trump has come along like the tooth fairy. This is one massive, magnificent gift.”) That puts enormous pressure on May—who has chosen the slogan “global Britain” to define her administration, promising to make the country a champion of free trade—to make real progress on a deal with Trump, the prospects of which are uncertain.

It is hard to square that goal, however, with a president elected, at least in part, because of his overt hostility to free trade. Besides, nothing in Trump’s character indicates he appreciates, let alone values, the concept of mutual advantage. He loves deals, but the joy of the deal comes from screwing the other guy. Everything appears to be a zero-sum game to Trump. In that respect, any warm words Trump and May exchange in the White House demand skepticism. What Trump does will be far more important than what he says. The flag-waving sections of the British press have cheered Trump’s decision to return a bust of Winston Churchill to the Oval Office, but that kind of symbolism is cheap, easy and close to meaningless.

Maybe, just maybe, Trump will recognize that even he needs friends, and that perhaps no country is better placed to guide an inexperienced U.S. president than America’s old wartime ally. Obama reportedly advised May to gently educate the new president in the ways of the world, and maybe Trump will listen. For May, that strategy carries unmistakable echoes of former Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s assertion that “These Americans represent the new Roman empire, and we Britons, like the Greeks of old, must teach them how to make it go.” That was as patronizing as it was delusional; May must avoid the same mistake of overestimating Britain’s importance and the Americans’ desire to listen.

Addressing congressional Republicans on Thursday, May flattered her audience while lacing her remarks with a considerable measure of self-delusion. “So as we rediscover our confidence together,” she said, “as you renew your nation just as we renew ours, we have the opportunity—indeed, the responsibility—to renew the special relationship for this new age. We have the opportunity to lead, together, again.” It is hard to read this as anything other than wistful pining for a world long since gone, but remarkably the British government seems to be taking the idea seriously.

For more than 60 years, the Anglo-American alliance has been the centerpiece of British foreign policy. And Friday’s meeting at the White House will surely produce kind words and flattering headlines hailing a new era in the so-called special relationship. In the post-Brexit era, that relationship looms larger than ever. Britain cannot move away from the Atlantic alliance, but in the age of Trump, nor can we rely on it.