It is said that in the event of an international security crisis, the Americans go to DEFCON 1, the Brits convene a meeting of the COBRA emergency committee and the French raise their national alert level from “surrender” to “collaborate.”

Tricky business, democracy. For confirmation of that, if he were still alive we could ask Edmund Burke, the 18th-century Anglo-Irish statesman and philosopher who did much to establish the tenets of modern conservatism.

You would think, would you not, that after more than 75 years of being in places where it is not wanted, Israel would have grown accustomed to the opprobrium it inevitably attracts: but evidently not.

With half the world ablaze, from Gaza to Donetsk and Syria to Sudan, it is heartening to note that our friends in Europe have their priorities in the correct order: and at the top of that order is food.