With this US president, diplomacy is over, but it would be great to have a clue how Britain is going to respond

“Does the prime minister agree with me,” asked Labour’s Alex McIntyre, “that we are delivering opportunity for the next generation?” The soft-soap question from your own team is such a well-worn convention of PMQs that it was previously impossible to imagine anyone bringing anything new to it, but McIntyre was so trite and banal, with so much incongruous passion, nay, fury, that it was genuinely diverting. Good job, that man. Someone put a sticker on his suck-ass chart.

The real business was the prime minister’s trip to Washington; and what a vast amount of business this encompasses. It’s three years this week “since Putin’s barbaric invasion of Ukraine”, Starmer reminded the house, and that grinding war still holds a unique place in the chamber: the issue on which every serious person is agreed.