SINCE the election of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States, the British Government has been running hither and thither trying to respond. Some moves have involved trying to reposition Britain as a strong Trump ally, implying that Brexit Britain could actually be a useful bridge to try and reconcile Europe and newly populist America.

In this idea, the US might actually want to sign a trade deal with Brexit Britain, putting the UK first in the queue, not last as President Barack Obama stated. Alternatively, Britain could become America’s cheerleader in getting other Nato states to live up to their stated pledge to spend two per cent of GDP on defence (a pledge that is being honoured far more in the breach than in observance). In its most extreme form, we have even seen the idea floated that Nigel Farage could act as a de facto British ambassador to Mr Trump’s America.

These hopeful ideas are no more than that: hopes, and probably distant ones at that. They miss out the inconvenient truth that the overwhelming thrust of Mr Trump’s campaign, when it came to foreign policy, was decidedly anti-free trade, anti-interventionist and anti-internationalist. If there was one mantra repeated monotonously in his speeches it was that free trade had failed the American worker, particularly the worker of the Midwestern industrial belt.

In this picture free trade agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta)have led to the exporting of American jobs from the US to Mexico and other countries. This message had great resonance. It was the “rust belt” white industrial workers, from Pennsylvania to Wisconsin, who provided Mr Trump with his electoral college victory. They switched in unprecedented numbers from the Democrats to the Republicans and, without their votes, Hillary Clinton would be the new president elect.

Therefore the idea that a Trump administration would somehow rush to sign a free trade pact with Brexit Britain shows a profound ignorance of what has just occurred in the US. Any movement that will occur in a Trump administration will be to try to water down existing free trade agreements such as Nafta.

The amount of time spent putting together a new deal with the UK would probably be non-existent. This position is one the Democrats seem to be moving to endorse as well. Since the election, the anti-free trade forces in the Democratic Party, which very much supported the candidacy of Senator Bernie Sanders, have been far more assertive. There is every chance that they could take over the party in the near future. All of this means that Brexit Britain would not be put at the end of the queue when it comes to free trade; it means that there would be no queue to join.

Britain’s relative powerlessness over trade with America will also be reflected in the defence debate. In the last few days, the UK has tried to curry favour with Mr Trump’s incoming administration by lecturing European Nato states about the need to live up to their pledges of spending two per cent of GDP on defence. The only problem with this sanctimonious preaching is that the UK itself only just reaches the two per cent threshold through a trick of blue smoke and mirrors. This year the UK Government added foreign aid and pensions for retired officers to the “defence” budget. In reality, the UK spends less than two per cent of GDP on defence.

Britain has been one of the most dramatic cutters of defence spending in Nato over the past few years. This is more than realized in the US, where Britain’s relative value as an ally on its own is known to be in decline.

This brings up the overall problem with Brexit Britain being a bridge to Mr Trump’s America. The “special relationship”, if existing at all, exists because of common national interest. The US does not like the UK more than other nations because it speaks the same language or shares some common history. The UK and America have been close allies for the past 75 years because their national interests were thought to be aligned. For the US, one of the great benefits of the UK has been that it could be a bridge to Europe, both in trade terms and in defence. Brexit Britain will be far less attractive to the US in both areas, regardless of how much love Mr Trump has for Mr Farage.

Professor O’Brien has the chair in Strategic Studies in the School of International Studies at the University of St Andrews.