Donald Trump has become something of a sole man. His cabinet members and White House visitors report that the President has developed a penchant for handing out $145 (£108) Florsheim shoes in an effort to up their sartorial game. In his Life of Johnson, Boswell reported that Dr. Johnson recoiled at an ‘eleemosynary supply’ of charitably donated shoes as an impecunious student at Christ Church, Oxford, and threw them away with indignation. Trump’s followers have no such freedom of action. ‘All the boys have them,’ one official told The Wall Street Journal, which ran a picture of his administration leaders obediently lined up and wearing the same shiny black leather numbers.

Despite Trump’s best efforts, however, the administration has been caught flat-footed, at least when it comes to the conflict in Iran. Trump envisions himself as an economic grandmaster but gyrations in energy markets seem to have come as something of a rude shock to him and his confederates. They had presumed that Tehran, much as it had in the past, would refrain from disrupting shipments through the Strait of Hormuz. Instead, Tehran has moved to mine it, a measure that has introduced further volatility into oil prices. The Trump administration said........

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