Sir Keir Starmer has irked a US leader who is on a vaguely defined mission to liberate Iran from oppressive theocratic mullahs, stop an out-of-control nuclear weapons programme, destroy a non-specific threat to “the American people”, and prevent Tehran’s proxies from destabilising the region. Which of these the present actions is aimed at delivering, or in what order, remains unclear, while Israel is simply content to see Iran weakened.

Hardly surprising then, that Starmer found it hard to find the nub of a convicting reason to back the US-Israeli strikes at the beginning of the conflict a week ago. War is always a high risk enterprise – war without strategy is a wild gamble.

The fact that he did not – only to commit British forces and material when Tehran responded by hitting targets across the Gulf – has earned savage opprobrium from US President. First in the body-blow swipe about a mild-mannered London lawyer turned politician being “no Churchill”.

Now comes another barrage of comments that the US does not need help from London – just as the resource-strapped Ministry of Defence scrabbles together an aircraft carrier to set sail to the region. No 10 and the Foreign Secretary, Yvette Cooper, have hastily reshaped a messy message of off-on involvement as a more crafted response, countering that Britain, not the US, will decide “what is in its national interest”.

The flaw in this is that by backing the spirit and ambition of the Trump assault on a rogue regime, while urging a return to negotiation about nukes with Iran (good luck with that one), other leaders like........

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