We’re at a crossroads. One way offers hope, at a price. The other simply doesn’t bear thinking about. With Donald Trump doing his best to turn the world inside out, liberal democracies are left reeling. More hinges on the Prime Minister’s visit to Washington in a few days than anything else he’s ever likely to achieve.
The French President will have got there first. Trying to convince anyone who’ll listen in the White House that America will enfeeble itself by dancing to the Russian dictator’s tune.
And when Keir Starmer makes it, on Thursday, he’ll hope and pray he can talk Trump into seeing that standing strong against Putin is the only way he can get one over the Chinese.
The devil’s own job, that bit of devil’s advocacy, seeing as The Donald’s already claimed that Ukraine started Russia’s invasion of their country. And everyone hates Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Even Trump’s UK-based chumocracy, notably Reform’s Nigel Farage and ex-PM Boris Johnson, have struggled with that bit.
But their suggestion that he sort of doesn’t really mean it doesn’t really cut it. Like saying a person shouldn’t be taken literally when they’ve just claimed it’s lovely and sunny at midnight.
Of course Putin’s the past master at the technique perfected by Hitler’s propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels, of telling a lie so often that it becomes the truth.
And the clear evidence is that Trump has swallowed the Kremlin’s fabrications, hook, line and sinker.
Hence the truly terrifying analogies being drawn, even by commentators on right wing British papers like the Telegraph.
That the Trump/Putin axis is an echo of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, when the Soviet Union struck up a non-aggression deal with Nazi Germany on the eve of World War Two.
Molotov’s boss, the genocidal maniac Joseph Stalin, was fond of a special term to describe innocent but idealistic folk who helped his cause: Useful idiots.
It’ll be Starmer’s job this week to try and wheedle/cajole/beg Trump not to fall into that trap.
Tricky, as Putin so clearly has the man’s orange-tinted ear. And, loathsome brute that the Russian President is, it’s hard to dispute that he’s far and away the cleverer of the two.
Of course it’s obvious that our Prime Minister has no choice but to tread ever so carefully, given how prickly, impulsive and just plain stupid Trump has a knack of being.
But there is also domestic public opinion to take into account. A poll conducted for the Times last week showed nine out of ten of us are egging Starmer on to speak his mind.
It must be exasperating for the man, as he started last week hoping to get everyone thinking about his reforms to the NHS. Which, incidentally, have shown signs of getting somewhere.
Fat chance. Never has the truth been more vividly displayed of the old saying: ‘When America sneezes the world catches a cold.’ More like, these days, a nasty bout of pneumonia.
Next to that, new data showing that the health service has topped two million more appointments since Labour came to office feels like no more than an aside. Likewise waiting lists now going down.
Which brings us on to another deeply dispiriting prospect. If, as is perfectly possible, neither Starmer nor anyone else gets anywhere with the White House, we’ll have to cough up instead.
We being us in UK, and all other liberal-minded nations in Europe.
What looked like the arrival of a new golden age, when the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s, might so easily turn out to have been a false dawn after all.
Meaning it may well be payback time for what was labelled at the time ‘the peace dividend’. Which translated into huge cutbacks in defence spending right across the continent.
Karl Marx, the godfather of communism, informed the world that: ‘History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.’
Not that there’s anything particularly funny about the idea of us having to suddenly stump up masses more to defend ourselves, if the Yanks suddenly decide not to bother any more.
During the period when the so-called cold war could have turned hot at any moment, we Brits were spending as much as seven per cent of all we had on our armed forces.
Now that’s shrunk by two-thirds. Which seemed perfectly sensible at the time. Less so now.
But even Starmer’s modest promise to push the levels up a little bit is going to prod the piggy bank which already has nothing like enough to sort what we can all see are crumbling public services.
If he really steps up to the plate and delivers anything like what current and former defence chiefs say is the bare minimum, one thing is for sure.
He’ll last one term in government, and go down in history as the horridest Prime Minister ever. As for his Chancellor Rachel Reeves, she’ll be seen as fit for the guillotine.
Food for thought for both of them, with a mini-budget coming up in a few weeks.
Ms Reeves is still stalwartly stating there’ll be no tax hikes, thanks to the panacea of economic growth.
Has to be said, mind, that Trump’s other little trump card, bunging a tax on everything anyone tries to sell to his blessed country, is widely expected to put paid to that idea.
Reeves, like every other person of note in Europe, has her thinking cap on. And certainly there’s a shrewd calculation going on regarding Trump’s legacy, and longevity.
They’ve worked out that, unlike in his overgrown baby made-up world, upending everything doesn’t really just happen overnight.
And, assuming he doesn’t do what he’s accusing the Ukrainian leader of doing, that’s to say riding roughshod over the constitution and seizing power for life, he will only last four years in office.
So best, maybe, to ride out the storm, play for time, and hope that when the man’s term expires the Americans elect someone sensible in his place.
For now, yes, make the right promises about doing our bit without the US backstop that we’ve got used to over the decades.
That, this line of thinking goes, should stabilise the situation enough to put Putin back in his nasty little box until a safer world order emerges.
Meantime, going back to the farce thing, last week’s tale of a Tory MPs hair-raising hijinks was a joy to behold.
For anyone who missed it, this was an extract from new book by Simon Hart, who was Rishi Sunak’s chief enforcer during his time in Number Ten.
The story began when Hart got a call, at nearly three in the morning, from a clearly off his face colleague explaining that he was stuck in a brothel in Bayswater and had run out of money.
To quote: ‘I met a woman as I left the Carlton Club who offered me a drink, but I now think she is a KGB agent. She wants five hundred pounds, and has left me in a room with twelve naked women and a CCTV.’
The tousled-headed but quick-thinking Mr Hart sorted a taxi to spirit him away. But though the silly chap did manage to get out of the room he got into the wrong cab.
And it turned out this was being driven by an Afghan agent who wanted three grand for another kind of ever so rude service. All a bit tricky.
But the sequel to this extraordinary episode came three weeks later over a shared late night pizza with the boss in Number Ten.
When Sunak asked about interesting things that happened during the course of his work he told him all about this one.
And?
Mr Hart went on to write: ‘Poor Rishi — he doesn’t believe such things happen. He is refreshingly straight-laced and tends to see the good in most people.’
Which, credit where it’s due, is rather sweet.
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