There is a specific kind of nausea that only sets in when you watch the world’s elite gather in a frozen Swiss village to congratulate themselves on their own benevolence while the planet actively dissolves into a puddle of radioactive sludge. We are, of course, talking about Davos, the annual World Economic Forum, that glittering carnival of hypocrisy where billionaires fly private jets to lectures on carbon footprints and arms dealers sip champagne while discussing conflict resolution. It is against this backdrop of high-altitude stupidity that we find the latest chapter in our geopolitical farce: The United Kingdom’s sanctimonious refusal to sign Donald Trump’s newly branded “Board of Peace.”

Let us pause to appreciate the branding. The “Board of Peace.” It sounds less like a diplomatic initiative and more like a failed committee within a homeowner’s association, or perhaps a discord server run by twelve-year-olds trying to mod a Minecraft server. It is classic Trumpian rhetoric—simple, loud, and entirely devoid of nuance. It implies the existence of a “Board of War,” which, coincidentally, is just the rest of the Davos attendee list. But the absurdity of the name is not the issue here. The issue is the staggering, performative cowardice of the British political establishment, personified this week by Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper.

Ms. Cooper has announced, with the grave seriousness of a substitute teacher denying a hall pass, that Britain will not act as a signatory to this treaty. The reason? The guest list includes Vladimir Putin. Here lies the exquisite, agonizing irony of modern liberalism. The UK government, currently led by a Labour party that seems desperate to prove it can be just as ineffective as the Tories but with sadder faces, has decided that the path to peace cannot involve the actual people fighting the wars. This is the diplomatic equivalent of trying to organize a divorce settlement but refusing to invite the spouse because they are “toxic.”

According to the reports, Britain “strongly supports” the President’s 20-point plan for Gaza. They love the plan. They adore the bullet points. They probably want to frame the PowerPoint slides. But they cannot bring themselves to sign the piece of paper because doing so might require them to stand in the same metaphysical vicinity as the Russian President. This is politics as pure aesthetics. It is a prioritization of optics over utility so severe it borders on the pathological. If the goal is peace—a concept humanity abandoned in practice roughly six thousand years ago—then one must presumably negotiate with the aggressors. You do not make peace with your friends; you make peace with your enemies. But in the sanitized, HR-approved world of Western diplomacy, we cannot engage with the Bad Men, lest we get their cooties on our pristine moral credentials.

So, the United Kingdom finds itself in the humiliating position of the awkward teenager at the school dance. They want to dance to the song—the Gaza plan—but they don’t want to be seen holding hands with the unpopular kids. It creates a Schrödinger’s Diplomacy where the UK is both supporting and rejecting the initiative simultaneously. They want the credit for backing a ceasefire without the political risk of endorsing the mechanism designed to deliver it. It is spinelessness elevated to an art form.

Let’s not let Trump off the hook, either. The idea that a “Board of Peace” is anything more than a branding exercise for his ego is laughable. He is assembling a league of autocrats and calling it a peace treaty, likely hoping to license the naming rights to a casino later. But the reaction from the UK exposes the fundamental paralysis of the European establishment. They are terrified of Trump, terrified of Putin, and terrified of their own electorates. They are trapped in a purgatory of protocol, obsessing over the shape of the table while the building burns down.

Yvette Cooper’s statement is a microcosm of why the West is faltering. It is an admission that they care more about the purity of the process than the outcome. They would rather a war continue than sign a document that might look bad in a historical retrospective or a Guardian op-ed. They have retreated into a world of symbolic gestures, where “supporting” a plan is considered a job well done, even if that support is entirely intangible and devoid of action.

The “concerns around involvement of Putin” are valid in a vacuum, but we do not live in a vacuum. We live in a sewer. And in a sewer, you sometimes have to wade through filth to clear a blockage. The UK’s refusal to sign is not a moral stand; it is a vanity project. It is an attempt to keep their hands clean in a world that is already covered in blood. It is the ultimate luxury of the irrelevant: to stand on the sidelines, critique the font size of the treaty, and claim moral superiority while doing absolutely nothing to stop the dying.

So, the Board of Peace will likely proceed without the British signature, rendering the UK even more inconsequential on the global stage. Trump will bluster, Putin will smirk, and Cooper will return to London, secure in the knowledge that she didn’t sit at the bad table, while the rest of us wonder why we bother paying attention to these people at all.