It’s not just that Starmer’s policy is immoral and will be ineffective. It also sidesteps the safeguards we have to prevent calamitous decisions

Your humble civil servants are watching with fascinated horror as our terrified prime minister tries to secure the guy ropes for a rapidly shrinking UK tent, in the hope that it can survive geopolitical storms from the east and west.

Spare a thought, then, for the one government department that has repeatedly found itself politically outside that tent and does so again now – the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO).

The author works for the UK civil service