There’s a bigger picture here, beyond Trump hatred. The hard reality is that Britain, in the eyes of our Middle East allies, has appeared to be a fair-weather friend. Iran is the latest crisis to expose our Prime Minister’s inadequacies. I suspect it won’t be the last.
It goes without saying that the current crop of Labour ministers and the Prime Minister, have doubled down on almost every negative trend and trait.
Starmer has become trapped in a confused world of his own making. He’s accepted an interpretation of international law which aids dictators over democracies. He’s alienating our closest ally whilst trying to appease Labour’s electoral base as well as its MPs.
Putin’s message to Russians is if you oppose me, think about every door handle you touch, every letter you pick up, and every drink you accept. His message to outsiders: if this is how I treat my own, just think how I will treat you.
China is a threat. It is trying to subvert the international system. Our best chance to avoid both dependency and war is to stand up for ourselves now, minimise our dependency and strengthen our alliances.
To have the same influence in global affairs, we are going to have to think much more carefully about how we apply power, and we will need to acquire more hard power.
Let’s be clear, our current China policy will bring neither prosperity nor a promotion of our values, but only long-term impoverishment and shame. It is the policy of appeasers, not patriots.
Rightly or wrongly, the handling of the killer of those three young girls fits into a wider sense of malaise — that the agenda and values of the British people are not those of the British state and its institutions.
In the last Parliament many persuaded the Conservative Government not only that we needed a more robust approach to China but we needed a more coherent one too. With the advent of a Labour Government, we appear to have given up on that entirely.
The next leader can demonstrate competence and vision by tackling this complex national security issue.
This murder signals that Moscow no longer cares what the collective West thinks, and is set on a course of confrontation. There is a ruthlessness to it the consequences of which we have not yet grasped.
Today Jimmy Lai, founder of the pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily, sees his thousandth day in prison. But the shadow of the Chinese security state stretches much, much further.
What can we do? Hoover up every bit of information and analysis we can. Task our agencies within finding out not only what is happening but what might happen, work through scenarios, especially the dangerous ones.
Those of us concerned believed we needed some adjustment to the system; there is currently far too much dependence on greenfield sites.
Over-riding international law isn’t perfect, but a muscular approach to self-interest feels like a breath of fresh air. Sorry if that offends – and Trump has done more to defend the rights of Venezuelans than Maduro’s Marxists did.