Donald Trump’s threats of a tariff war against the UK and other countries which oppose US annexation of Greenland are a test of Sir Keir Starmer’s judgment and diplomacy. Some would like to see him get tough with the US president and issue threats of his own. But while that might satisfy some at home, it’s not the right moment for verbal grenades, writes Herald columnist Rebecca McQuillan

The US president, supposedly our closest ally, threatens to help himself to Greenland and use economic thumbscrews to coerce “allies” who protest. The liberal world order is hanging by a thread. Three large power blocs, the US, China and Russia, seem intent between them on ushering in a new age of imperialism, with the globe carved up into spheres of influence where human rights and democracy are sidelined in favour of naked plunder. As if to underline the point, Vladimir Putin, responsible for hundreds of thousands of civilian and military deaths in Ukraine, has just been invited onto Donald Trump’s Gaza Board of Peace. Nothing from here is impossible.

Securing Britain’s interests in this dangerous, unpredictable environment is one of the greatest diplomatic tests any modern British Prime Minister has faced. As a second-tier power whose glory days are behind it, the faded aristocrat at a table of billionaires, Britain grandstanding would fool no one. Keir Starmer has decided that at this moment he must proceed with restraint, intelligence, conviction and courage, marshalling all the skills of a bomb disposal expert.

At a sombre press conference yesterday, he called President Trump’s attempt to force European allies to back his........

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