What the British still like to call the special relationship has hit a bump in the road. A year ago, Theresa May dashed to Washington to be the first foreign leader to cross the threshold of Donald Trump’s White House. Now the US president has told the world he is steering clear of London. These are not easy times for the prime minister. The promise of a post-Brexit “global Britain” looks beyond fanciful when Atlantic storms are set alongside self-chosen estrangement from Europe.

If truth be told, the Twitter tantrum that saw Mr Trump cancel a planned visit to London should have been cause for relief. The snub, supposedly about the cost of a new US embassy in the capital, is a passing embarrassment. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, a firm admirer of former president Barack Obama, has been spared the ordeal of having lunch with Mr Trump. And the president would not have appreciated the mass protests on the streets.

Mr Trump will pass the time instead at the World Economic Forum. The encounter scarcely promises a meeting of minds. The Davos crowd pride themselves on their globalism. This, we need to understand, is a plutocracy with a social conscience. For next week, the forum has set itself the fearsome task of mapping “a shared future in a fractured world”. Nobody has the faintest idea what this means, but presumably it abhors America First economic nationalism.