Trump's Poodle

Nigel Farage breaks cover

Say what you like about Donald Trump, he certainly knows how to concentrate minds. Sure, he does it in much the same way that a man standing up on your plane with a bomb strapped to his chest makes you think about whether you lived a good life, but you can’t deny the effect.

So the 72 hours since his Oval Office meltdown have seen European leaders engaging their brains with the question of European defence, a subject that perhaps they should have thought about a little more seriously on, well, any day of the last decade.

Books are going to be written about that White House press conference: was it a deliberate trap for Volodymyr Zelensky, or did Trump and his gang simply expect that they would get the grovelling they’ve had from everyone else? It’s certainly clear that what the US president most values is seeing people crawl to him. To look at his entourage is to see a gang of sidekicks who have spent their lives searching for an Alpha Bully to suck up to.

Now read on…