Keir Starmer flinches from the alarming truth that the United States no longer behaves like a friend

Trumpian aggression towards America's traditional allies has become a menace that cannot be ignored

- Andrew Rawnsley

The median British voter and the typical Labour MP think that the prime minister spends too much of his time on foreign affairs. It is worse than they know. Many of his days over the past year have been entirely consumed by the world. Sir Keir Starmer will be scrambling to Berlin on Monday for yet another set of crisis talks with other European leaders, hoping to prevent an American sell-out of Ukraine that rewards Vladimir Putin's aggression by handing swathes of stolen territory to the tyrant of the Kremlin. The world never stops spinning for the prime minister - and its wildest gyrations are the work of the resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC At the risk of sounding wildly unfashionable, I think Sir Keir has navigated the many horrors of the relationship with Donald Trump just about as well as any prime minister could. Would Angie or Ed or Shabana or Wes- or any other putative replacement - have made a better fist of it? Consider me sceptical. Might a different prime minister have fared considerably worse? Quite possibly. At some cost to both personal dignity and domestic popularity, Sir Keir has kept what some people still insist on calling "the special relationship" more or less on the road.

For a stark illustration of what he is up against, I refer you to the chilling rewrite of American national security strategy that has recently landed with an alarming crump.

The 32-page document has nothing condemnatory to say about Russia, an absence which is shocking without being surprising. It doesn't even mention the possibility that Putin might be a threat. Moscow has gloatingly noted that official US policy is now "largely consistent" with the Kremlin's view of how the world should be ordered.

The document oozes contempt for America's traditional allies in Europe, who are allegedly facing "civilizational erasure", a favoured trope of rightwing extremists.