It remains to be seen how far President Trump’s embrace of Russia and abandonment of traditional allies will go. But “the West” may be gone.

A budget-constrained France could launch a national loan to fund plans to beef up its defence spending, Prime Minister Francois Bayrou and Finance Minister Eric Lombard said on Friday.

In fact this was Christian Pineau, the French foreign minister, after the Suez crisis in 1956. Then, America forced Britain and France to pull back from their joint military adventure. Britain concluded that it had to hug America close;