US President Donald Trump has put down growing challenges to Britain and wider Europe, most immediately about Ukraine. Allegations of Volodymyr Zelensky being a ‘dictator’ and American engagement with Ukraine depending on new Ukrainian elections is scarily maddening – but Western leaders need pick their way warily: wholly justified comments and ripostes on wildly varying American lines risk reducing what leverage they have.

How should we, and they, handle this?

First, the substance of the ‘dictator’ charge. Sir Keir Starmer rightly reassured Mr Zelensky that the UK, too, suspended elections during the Second World War. No one suggested we stopped being a democracy.

More practically, what would a Ukrainian national election look like right now? Election in only the 80% of territory where Ukraine’s electoral authorities can operate looks like conceding that the other 20% is no longer really Ukraine. Including the........

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