Would You Have Us Kneel?

I've been pondering something since last night.

I see a lot of people saying that we should have treated Trump with more respect because we need him for a trade deal when we leave the EU.

Now, let's leave aside the fact that we were never likely to get a good deal from Trump in the first place - why would we? Let's look instead at something I spotted yesterday. Many of the people who have been saying this were vocally pro Brexit on the basis of wanting to take back sovereignty.

They wanted to leave the EU so they wouldn't be 'dictated to by foreigners' and yet now argue we can not exercise our free, democratic, right to protest in case we upset a foreign leader. In case he takes offence and doesn't give us what we want. What are we now? Beggars? Is that what they would reduce us to?

We had representation in Europe, MEPs that we elected. We had a voice in the EU parliament and often, but not always, got our way. Less often than many might have liked, its true, but more often than you will from Trump's America. You can't give that up in the name of greater home rule only to cede it to an American president we have no say in selecting and who has no reason to give our concerns any real weight.

This isn't a criticism of America. Why should they bend over backwards to give us the trade deal we want if they don't see it as in their interests?

If they are, as so many people are claiming, our only hope for a good trade deal then they hold all the cards and can dictate the terms entirely to suite themselves. Why shouldn't they? We would have done the same.

This idea that we have to treat Trump with a courtesy he has not earned, in the face of a flurry of insults he has dealt us and other allies just in order to keep him happy so he gives us a good trade deal appals me. It is asking us to bend the knee.

On the one hand we are told to leave Europe so that we do not have to answer to 'foreign powers' and on the other hand we are told to pander to the ego of a foreign leader in order to gain his favour. You can not ask a nation to leave a union in which it has a representation in order to enter a relationship in which it has none. That is not 'Taking back control', that is ceding it to someone else in far greater measure than we ever had before.

Arguing that we shouldn't offend Trump for fear of losing a trade deal we don't even actually have with him is cow-towing. It is forelock tugging in a why that British citizens have not been expected to do since the civil war. It is taking the British reluctance to 'make a fuss' to an extreme I will never accept. I don't like the view from down there on my knees, so I am glad that so many of us have chosen to stand up. Please send all angry, rightwing hate mail to my customer service email: Iwontreaditanyway@mail.com