I hope Theresa May squirmed when she saw her picture on the weekend front pages. I did - and so, I'm sure, did much of the world.
To listen to BBC news day after day last week, you'd have thought it was something to be proud of that the prime minister was the first foreign leader to visit the new US president. It wasn't. It was deeply shameful.
In allowing herself to be photographed hand-in-hand, smiling like a happy couple, May allowed herself - and by extension, us - to be associated with the most feared and despised regime in the world right now.
If you, or she, think a trade deal with the States is worth it - or any real alternative to being in the European market - consider this. British exports to the EU are around 15 times those to the US.
And the new president is a wheeler-dealer property tycoon. He will see May as someone who has quit one home without another to go to. In other words, a sucker to be taken advantage of.
Which could be extremely bad new for the NHS, ripe for exploitation by US companies.
US food safety and welfare standards don't come up to ours either. Or to put it another way, ours don't come down to theirs. Yet.
Meanwhile May prepares to chuck foreign academics out of Britain, ensuring the UK - like the US - loses some of its best brains. A form of madness that recalls both Hitler's Germany and Pol Pot's Cambodia.
All in all, it's a very strange time for Jeremy Corbyn to give the government a free pass on leaving the EU, rendering the debate on Article 50 all but pointless. A description which now sadly applies also to the Labour leadership.
To listen to BBC news day after day last week, you'd have thought it was something to be proud of that the prime minister was the first foreign leader to visit the new US president. It wasn't. It was deeply shameful.
In allowing herself to be photographed hand-in-hand, smiling like a happy couple, May allowed herself - and by extension, us - to be associated with the most feared and despised regime in the world right now.
If you, or she, think a trade deal with the States is worth it - or any real alternative to being in the European market - consider this. British exports to the EU are around 15 times those to the US.
And the new president is a wheeler-dealer property tycoon. He will see May as someone who has quit one home without another to go to. In other words, a sucker to be taken advantage of.
Which could be extremely bad new for the NHS, ripe for exploitation by US companies.
US food safety and welfare standards don't come up to ours either. Or to put it another way, ours don't come down to theirs. Yet.
Meanwhile May prepares to chuck foreign academics out of Britain, ensuring the UK - like the US - loses some of its best brains. A form of madness that recalls both Hitler's Germany and Pol Pot's Cambodia.
All in all, it's a very strange time for Jeremy Corbyn to give the government a free pass on leaving the EU, rendering the debate on Article 50 all but pointless. A description which now sadly applies also to the Labour leadership.
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