A question that’s been asked a lot about Keir Starmer is: which bit of being prime minister is he a natural at? Everyone knows he’s not Mr Charisma; could he be Mr Competent? Huh – after six months of bad optics, that wasn’t flying either.
On Tuesday, it turned out that he is incredibly good at surprise escalation. Before noon, we were in a world where the prime minister was about to ride two horses all the way to the US – the horse that supported Ukraine, and the horse that was happy to see a “peace deal” devised by Putin and bloviated by Trump.
