IT’S been a bad week for the UK Government. I mean bad, even compared with all the other bad weeks.

It began with the inevitable unravelling of Theresa May’s so-called Chequers plan – the new impossible version of Brexit to replace all the other impossible versions of Brexit which have been floated since June 2016. Various elements were knitted together in the continued hope of keeping the hard-right, no-deal ideologues on board along with those who retain a shred of pragmatism and understand the need for a close economic relationship with Europe.

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This is the only thing Theresa May has been trying to achieve since taking office – keeping the factions of her party together. This comes before the economy, consumer protection, workers’ rights, environmental policy, security, or any aspect of the public interest. It must be a bitter irony for those Conservatives who backed an EU referendum to resolve their party’s differences, to see that it has driven the fracture even deeper.

Within days of presenting the all-new fudge recipe of course, the Cabinet fell apart.

Few people will miss the now former Brexit Secretary, David Davis. The man was semi-detached at best from the whole process, having helped set in motion the most complex and important negotiations the UK has taken part in for generations, and then taken barely a passing interest in the talks himself.

As for Boris Johnson, he will go down as perhaps the worst foreign secretary in the UK’s history. With a string of racist utterances behind him, and a habit of blatant empire apologism, he should never have been given the job in the first place. But his support for Turkish aggression against the Kurds, his contempt for human life in the notorious “clear away the dead bodies” jibe, and his carefree ignorant mishandling of the Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe case all speak volumes about his moral bankruptcy.

It could have been an opportunity for May to strengthen herself, and appoint ministers who would do the right thing by facing down the Brexit extremists in her party, who are a minority in Parliament, commit to the closest relationship with Europe that can be achieved, and limit the damage her predecessor’s referendum has caused.

But no. She chose instead to stick with the illusion of party unity, by appointing the likes of Matt Hancock and Dominic Raab. Not exactly household names, but very familiar to the hard-right cabal that circulates around groups like the IEA and the Free Enterprise Group; these are the forces seeking to drag the UK ever further to the right, seeking to strip us of workplace rights, privatise the NHS, scrap public health measures, run schools for profit and undermine equality policies. Raab in particular has described feminists as “obnoxious bigots”.

No doubt he would feel right at home with Donald Trump. Which brings me to the end of this cringeworthy week for the UK Government. Though many of them share an ideology with the climate-denying, racist, misogynist bully in the White House, for the most part they like to be subtle about it. Ever so discreet. Ever so British. They’ll undermine renewables and climate action, while committing to the Paris agreement on paper. They’ll appoint racists, misogynists and homophobes to high office, while feigning concern about the gender pay gap and making vacuous speeches at Pride. They’ll pursue the economic nationalism of Brexit while denouncing as jingoistic its very opposite in Scotland’s explicitly internationalist and inclusive independence movement.

The UK Government knew that it was a bad look for May to be photographed holding Trump’s hand during her visit to the White House last year, and they know it will do her no good this time to be seen too cosy with Trump after his declaration that Britain is in “turmoil” and his notable failure to back up the PM despite heaping praise on her jettisoned foreign secretary.

With the quiet, covert rise of this far-right cabal within the UK Government, the destabilising actions of their soulmate in the US, and the final stages of an attempt to use Brexit as an exercise in disaster capitalism, these are dangerous times. I know that some people wonder what the point of protest is in the face of such threats. But the many thousands of people who’ll be demonstrating in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee, Ayrshire and elsewhere will be sending an important message – to those in the US who oppose the Trump regime.

The many people in the US whose lives are threatened and marginalised by Trump’s politics and who want their country to be known for values of decency, they deserve to know that we stand in solidarity with them. If we have a special relationship, it’s with them and not with the odious bully in the White House.