World of Politics with Harry McGee

Cheese-eating surrender monkeys.” The phrase was first used in the cartoon TV series, The Simpsons, by Willie, the Scottish janitor.

While Bart and his friends sit in a class at the Springfield Elementary School learning French, Willie appears at the door and describes the French as “cheese-eating surrender monkeys”.

The same phrase was appropriated and made into a political phrase by right-wing American commentators in the run-up to the Iraq war in 2003, as a pejorative put-down of Europeans who were more opposed to the invasion.

It popped into my mind over the weekend when I was looking at the coverage of the ‘summit’ meeting between US president Donald Trump and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Scotland.

For one, it was held in Turnberry, a golf course in Scotland which is owned by Trump. So the senior EU delegation had to go to the US President’s private residence with caps in hand. You don’t even have to ask who had the cards stacked in their favour.

They held a joint press conference. Trump was talking about 50-50 and also saying that pharma would be subject to a separate deal (which would have meant trouble for Ireland).

Anyway, at the heel of the hunt the EU agreed to accept 15 per cent tariffs and to invest billions of dollars in US energy (probably LNG and fracked gas) as well as US military equipment.

And what concessions did the US give in return. Zero. Zilch. Nada. When von der Leyen was asked about it, she said the US did not have to do it because the trade balance had favoured Europe.

She looked like most other presidents in a one-on-one situation with Trump, supplicant, a bit nervous, inferior. And it was an inferior deal.

On Monday, the director general of IBEC, Danny McCoy, described it for what it was – a capitulation.

Even Taoiseach Micheál Martin made no effort to be sanguine. Nobody was in favour of tariffs, he said. He argued we have to recognise ‘new realities’ that the world has changed since Donald Trump became US president for a second time.

It was bad but not as bad as the alternative. Trump was threatening to impose tariffs of 35 per cent from August 1, which would have sparked a trade war.

That would have been “ruinous”,” said Martin. It would have caused untold damage to the Irish economy and jobs.

EU officials said that Trump had originally looked for 30 per cent, and then offered 21 per cent, before finally settling on 15 per cent. That was presented, somehow, as a victory for the EU.

Pictured: Bad week…EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen