When she called in EU diplomats to the gilded halls of Lancaster House, British PM Theresa May knew, as much as her interlocutors, the precariousness of the British post-Brexit position.

Just hours before, HSBC confirmed it was moving 1,000 jobs from London to Paris, Toyota said it was considering how it could 'survive' when Britain leaves the EU, and Nissan said it was examining  the agreement it had reached with Mrs May in the light of the Trump presidency.

After declaiming in conciliatory terms how Britain intends to draw up a new partnership with Europe, she abruptly changed her tone and bluntly said that if Britain did not get the trade deal it wanted, she would walk away without any agreement. If Europe tried to impose a 'punitive' arrangement for Britain, she would fight back, ripping up the country's European economic model and setting "the competitive tax rates and the policies that would attract the world's best companies and biggest investors."

This threat to turn Britain into a low-tax Singapore of the west, coupled with an implicit suggestion that Britain's defence and intelligence contribution to Europe might be at risk if the EU proved to be tough.

This implied and not so hidden threat was later relayed to Malta by David Jones, Minister of State at the Department for Exiting from the European Union, who spoke of punishment in the context of Brexit.

The question asked after Mrs May's presentation was whether she was bluffing. Could it be true she was actually speaking of such threats and their inevitable consequences? Was it perhaps the opening gambit in what will be a long and tough negotiation?

If this is the case, Mrs May's threats show how precarious is Britain's position when it insists on a hard Brexit but wants to remain inside the single market and resorts to threats if it does not get its way.

All this must be factored in within the context of a changed world picture following the election of Donald Trump and his declaration of bare-faced protectionism as the new American policy and also within the context of what is happening inside Europe in a year of many elections with accompanying dangers from eurosceptics and xenophobes. Mrs May's visit to President Trump tomorrow opens up the possibility of Britain exchanging membership of the EU with a privileged an subordinate relationship with the US.

All this changes very much the nature of Malta's relationship with its former colonial power. As President of the European Council Malta is trying very hard to straddle between loyalty to its former ruler and loyalty to the Union.

By the end of the Maltese presidency, we may know which of the two relations has survived.