Theresa may

Theresa May’s visit to Washington to meet President Trump last week was seen, before it happened, as being beneficial to both sides. The Prime Minister’s allies in government thought this was an excellent opportunity for May to show the new President how it was done - and to send a message to the world that Britain really matters. But today things look a little less advantageous for the Prime Minister. That her visit was swiftly followed by Trump signing an executive order which halts all refugee admissions and temporarily bans people from seven countries has put the Prime Minister under pressure to criticise the man whose hand she ended up holding. Initially she didn’t - and was heckled by the press when dodging their questions on the matter.

So now Theresa May knows what it's like to be Tangoed. Her visit to Washington, hailed a 'triumph' by friendly newspapers, has become a liability. Life comes at you fast, especially when you launch a diplomatic initiative on a wing and a prayer, not in response to a clinical evaluation of its likely outcome. Because who can really be surprised that hugging Donald Trump close would so swiftly induce a form of diplomatic blowback? Who is surprised that tying yourself to an administration as vicious as it is incompetent might prove a high-risk enterprise? The Prime Minister played two roles on her trip to the United States. She was both supplicant and counsellor.

This weekend Theresa May discovered why it is a prime minister most fears events. After a well executed two-day charm offensive in America cementing the UK/US special relationship, the Prime Minister was plunged into a row over President Trump's decision to stop travellers and refugees from seven Muslim countries gaining entry into the US. May's sluggish response to condemn the move (after initially dodging the question in a press conference in Turkey) has led to her being branded 'Theresa the appeaser'. As Jeremy Corbyn appeared on Peston on Sunday to put pressure on the Prime Minister over her relationship with Trump, May borrowed a trick from Osborne and sent David Gauke to try and clear up the mess on the Andrew Marr show.

Well, Theresa May managed to lay on the praise towards Trump without seeming too sycophantic, which made their press conference a reasonable success. May congratulated Trump on his 'stunning' electoral victory while describing Britain's future as 'open to the world'. May seems to be presenting herself as a reassuring 'third way' leader between the frightening wildness of Trumpism and the suffocating multilateralism of the EU. It is silly to call her Thatcher to his Reagan only a few days into the Trump presidency, but certainly today could mark the beginning of a very important 'renewed' Special Relationship.

The Trump / May press conference went as well as the Prime Minister’s team could have hoped. The new president was effusive about Brexit saying it was a ‘wonderful thing’, a ‘fantastic thing’ and declaring that it’ll be a ‘tremendous asset’ for the UK. He was also warm about May personally, predicting that their relationship was going to be ‘fantastic’ and opining that they had already hit it off.  Usefully for May, Trump also didn’t say anything outrageous, by his standards, at the press conference. In response to the BBC, he said that the US wouldn’t torture because Defence Secretary Mattis’s objections overrode his own personal belief that it worked.

On Thursday afternoon, huge numbers of ministerial Range Rovers swept into Parliament after government whips got whiff of an SNP plot to mess with the government's Brexit plans. Believing the SNP were planning to call for a last-minute vote on next week's business involving the Brexit bill, Tory MPs came back to make up the numbers. In the end, the ambush failed to materialise but the incident is a sign of the tactics to come now that Brexit has entered its parliamentary phase. The government bill, which contains just two clauses and is 137 words long, states that its aim is to 'confer power on the prime minister to notify, under article 50(2) of the treaty on European Union, the United Kingdom’s intention to withdraw from the EU'.

The Tory press is swooning because Mrs May will on Friday become the first foreign leader to visit Donald Trump. Think of that! We are still top of the world; still, after all these years, at the front of the queue to pay tribute to the new emperor of the West. Despite everything, and the cruel effects of the passage of time, when flirty America wants a relationship, we are what we have always been: ‘the special one’. As Mrs May herself will tell the president, So as we rediscover our confidence together – 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.

The Prime Minister’s heralded ‘industrial strategy’ was robbed of headlines by the story of the misguided Trident missile. But it was perhaps as well that the 132-page green paper — with its ‘ten pillars’ of platitude about ‘delivering affordable energy and clean growth’, ‘improving procurement’ and all the rest — garnered so little attention, because even the business voices who were waiting to welcome it were quick to spot it as no more than a wordy discussion draft, bereft of substantive ideas.