Sir Keir Starmer, chided by Trump for not being Winston Churchill, should have quoted back his warning: “Never, never, believe that any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on that strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter.”

The attack on Iran has created a shortage of oil and natural gas that is already causing economic damage across the globe, because the regime has throttled the Strait of Hormuz. A fifth of the world’s supplies of hydrocarbon-based energy have been stranded at the far end of the Persian Gulf. Trump never anticipated this, or if he was warned about it, he chose to ignore it. His priorities lie elsewhere. On Truth Social, his social media account, he declared: “Watch what happens to these deranged scumbags today. They’ve been killing innocent people all over the world for 47 years, and now I, as the 47th President of the United States of America, am killing them. What a great honour it is to do so!” Hardly Churchillian.

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