Editorial: The UK has no alternative but to work with Europe over the disgraceful threats from Donald Trump

Most European countries have reacted to Donald Trump’s wildly unpredictable behaviour by currying favour with him.

The blunt reality of the situation is that no European nation is able to stand up to America. Even the wealthiest of those countries, Germany, is a fraction of the size of the United States.

Germany made itself dependent on Russian gas. And all of its fellow EU countries have spent far too little on defence over many decades so they cannot resist American might either independently, or collectively.

Canada, next door to the US and hitherto arguably America’s closest ally, is in no real position to withstand US bullying either – not economically or militarily.

And the UK is a similarly weak position, having allowed its defence expenditure to dwindle in favour of a massive welfare bill, and no longer being part of the EU, or having that collective clout. This is not to say that Brexit was a bad move, but rather to say that it had pros and cons, and loss of influence within the wealthy EU bloc was arguably the greatest con.

This has all come to the surface amidst President Trump’s disgraceful threat to charge the UK a 10% tariff “on any and all goods” sent to the US from February 1, increased to 25% from June 1, until a deal is reached for Washington to purchase Greenland from Denmark.

Mr Trump says: “As members of Nato, we are committed to strengthening Arctic security as a shared transatlantic interest.”

But he is destroying Nato by threatening his closest allies in this deplorable way.

This shows that sycophancy towards President Trump – the understandable but demeaning UK approach towards him – does not work. And so this is an issue on which we have to work closely with other Nato allies and also with an EU of which we were recently a member.