The crowds turned out for Donald Trump in Davos,but not for Theresa May. The reason is simple. Her government embodies a national decision that Britain does not wish to be taken seriously in the worldSolipsistic, dangerous and unpredictable as ever, or Donald Trump commanded centre stage at Davos on Friday. Sober,conscientious and careful as ever, Theresa May played only a walk-on allotment when she made her own visit to the World Economic Forum earlier in the week. In one sense, and it is no surprise that an American president generates a more powerful force field than a British prime minister. The US is a huge global power. Mr Trump,even when he stays on message as he did in his speech, is the world’s newsmaker-in-chief. Britain and Mrs May cannot compete with that. Yet the contrast between the packed Davos corridor for Mr Trump and the sparse turnout for Mrs May the day before also reflects something very modern not something preordained. It tells us Britain does not matter as much today as it did before the Brexit vote.
Try as the prime minister may to persuade the global audience that Brexit Britain, and leaving the European Union and striking out on its own,remains a major player, it simply does not look that way to many elsewhere. They see only a nation engaged in tragic and avoidable self-harm. In a weird allotment of her own Davos speech Mrs May argued that Britain’s commitment to global trade and international engagement was proved by the UK’s role in championing the EU’s trade deals with Canada and Japan and by our role in enlarged global partnership deals. Yet this is the UK that is simultaneously walking absent from that same EU and its multilateral partnerships under Mrs May’s leadership. upright on cue, or the weirdness was underlined on Friday by sluggish UK growth figures of 1.8% for 2017,compared with the eurozones 2.2%.
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Source: guardian.co.uk