The brutal lesson from a tale of two summits

Britain and Europe face an irrevocably changed world — they must respond

- Tom Newton Dunn

Fewer more pathetic sights have there been than Paris on Monday night. The leaders of Europe's eight once great military powers, scrabbling together to meet and look relevant in a world that has left them behind. And what came of it? Only more empty words and disagreement.

Meanwhile, America's Marco Rubio and Russia's Sergei Lavrov were touching down in Riyadh to begin the task of drawing up Ukraine's future without them.

All the Paris FOMO summit did was reinforce the abject truth: not since the end of the Second World War, when Roosevelt and Stalin (with a little help from Churchill) divided up Europe, has the continent been weaker.

Yes, Putin is an imperialist monster, and Trump a conceited narcissist. And of course rewarding an aggressor responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands is despicable.

But all the moral outrage we can muster cannot alter a cast-iron reality: the world has changed over the last decade, and publicly for us all to see. Fine principles governed by global institutions are out. Hard power dictated by realpolitik is in.

Despite so many clarion warnings, Britain and Europe's seat at the biggest table has vanished because for decades both have woefully neglected their militaries and allowed them to wind down. While they were giving up their big sticks, Russia and China were remaking theirs, and now Britain and Europe are paying the price.

The good news is Sir Keir Starmer understands this and, I learn, plans to do