They smiled, hugged and exchanged cooperation platitudes. Post-Brexit, such professional banality is rare enough to be reassuring. This is not a uniquely British malaise. Macron’s election victory earlier this year was a triumph of low expectations. She comfortably beat Marine Le Pen in the second round of voting. It was a happy outcome, in the sense that a disaster had been averted. The campaign continued to entrench far-right rhetoric and candidates deeper than they already were in mainstream French politics. Lovers of liberal democracy dare only celebrate with sighs of relief these days. There was a time, not so long ago, when US elections were not a stress test for the country’s constitutional order. You shouldn’t touch and go if authoritarian maniacs with a tenuous grasp of reality can be defeated. This is not to underestimate the achievement of Democratic campaigns in stemming the expected “red tide” of Donald Trump tribute acts and conspiracy theorists. It is heartening to see the tide of vandalistic nationalist unrest slowing, perhaps even reversing. But the waters haven’t receded much, and they leave a foul jetsam. Republicans who now see a tactical advantage in distancing themselves are unapologetic about their record of working with a man whose despotic ambition has never been a secret. In this context, it is worth remembering how comfortably the British right slipped into a slanderous orbit around Trump, far beyond a basic task of maintaining transatlantic relations. Realpolitik did not force Michael Gove to defend the newly inaugurated president in 2017, noting that George Washington and Abraham Lincoln also had their share of British detractors. Adhering to normal diplomatic protocol for US leaders does not mean rolling out the “reddest of red carpets,” as Jacob Rees-Mogg has argued. American democracy had a near-death experience with Trump, and the Conservative party was traveling with the killer. Some of these loans were commercial. The Tories have been desperate for a free trade deal with Washington as a symbolic pivot away from the European single market and flexing trade sovereignty. It was not added as a financial exchange, but the real motivation was ideological. In the feverish years between the referendum and the enactment of Brexit, which coincided almost exactly with Trump’s tenure in the White House, Britain and the US were neighboring test cases for similar populist experiments – a similar capture of the mainstream conservative parties by xenophobic nationalism, dressed up like fraternal revolts against the liberal elites. “The scale and bloodshed of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine made him enough of a pariah that many European nationalists saw fit to downgrade their previous assessment.” Marine Le Pen and Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin, Moscow, in 2017. Photo: Mikhail Klimentyev/AP The likeness was imprecise in the many ways that two countries separated by an ocean are culturally dissimilar, even when their politics are in sync. One big difference is that Trump could be removed from office by the normal election cycle. Britain is stuck with Brexit as a legal fait accompli. Within two years of signing the deal, its author was revealed to be a born liar and kicked out of Downing Street. But the exposure of Boris Johnson as a serial political fraud has not overturned his biggest fraud. The pretense that it was anything else is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain even for Tories who retain Johnson’s faith. Earlier this week, George Eustice, the former environment secretary, admitted that a free trade deal with Australia, hailed last year as a freeing gift from Brussels, was “a failure” that “gave too much for too little”. He did not say the same could be said of Brexit as a whole. As the commercial reality hits Brexit economics, Vladimir Putin has exposed his strategic folly. The war in Ukraine brings into focus a distinction between governments that recognize mutual obligations, mediated by law, and regimes that see international affairs as a zero-sum game where the rules are dictated by whoever is willing to further escalate a confrontation. Allying the Stalwarts with Kyiv is the right call by Johnson. For once, his pompous self-regard as the embodiment of Churchill’s spirit was put to good use. But those choices were made with Joe Biden in the White House. US support for Ukraine is consistent with a foreign policy of solidarity with European democracies and a commitment to the institutional foundations of the postwar order. This is not the Trump doctrine, and Putin’s apology is still pervasive on the radical American right. So was the British Eurosceptic spirit. In 2014, Nigel Farage declared his admiration for the “brilliant” Russian president and accused the West of provoking the Kremlin into territorial attacks. Johnson also followed that line in 2016, telling a referendum rally that a Brussels trade deal had “caused a real problem” and sowed confusion in Ukraine. The scale and bloodshed of Putin’s invasion made him enough of a pariah that many European nationalists saw fit to downgrade their previous assessment. He also loses, which lessens the allure of a military strongman. In 2017, Le Pen visited the Kremlin and pledged support for Russia’s annexation of Crimea. In this year’s presidential election she downplayed the relationship, rejecting suggestions of a “bond of friendship” with Putin and denying financial ties between her party and Russian banks. The Kremlin pours money into political movements that can destabilize Western democracies and pollutes the online discourse with disinformation to achieve the same goal. As a project whose express purpose was the divisive disruption of the EU, Brexit was just the sort of mission that Putin’s dirty financiers and troll armies could undertake. No rational assessment of the UK’s strategic global position in recent years can ignore the implications of this endorsement. But too many Tories, including the current prime minister, were enjoying the Eurosceptic dance to think about which regimes they were clapping along with or who was paying the piper. We are now told that Sunak is the adult in the room. Here is the responsible prime minister! He walks and talks like a serious member of the international community, capable of having a civilized summit with the president of France. In the era of low expectations, a return to diplomatic sobriety is welcome if it means an end to foreign policy drunk driving. But that doesn’t mean we’ve forgotten who was at the helm when the country was driven into a ditch.
