It’s Morton’s fork for poor old Blighty.

Trump and his crew have shone a harsh light on European defence, showing it up as dysfunctional, all the way from boots on the ground through budgets to production capacity.

This week’s post takes foreign policy as first serving the people of the UK, then our friends, then the rest of the world. Once this was known as “realism”.

This post risks an ungracious tone, a few days after learning that Trump’s first trade deal is with the UK.

It is unpleasant to admit it, but dear old Blighty has been a deadbeat for over a century. Our central fiscal characteristic is that we don’t pay our way.

Growth and investment make for a post which is easy to write, but tricky to realise.

No-one knows where Trump’s on-again-off again tariffs are going to end up. The only certain thing is that the rest of the world is in for an overdose of once-bitten-twice-shy, scrabbling for new supply-chains and trade relations amid a general atmosphere of increased distrust.

Trump is upending European security and global trade, also spooking public and private sector players with conduct seen at best as short-sighted, at worst as arbitrary and unpredictable.

If you find it weird that a series on US trade should touch on housing, please soldier on for a few paragraphs.