Bridge-building has been a struggle for recent British prime ministers. Boris Johnson was widely mocked when he proposed a 28-mile link from Scotland to Northern Ireland, spanning a trench containing 1mn tonnes of unexploded munitions, chemical weapons and radioactive waste.

Sir Keir Starmer was also greeted with some incredulity when he suggested on the eve of this week’s trip to Washington that he could be the link between an unconstrained White House and a Europe traumatised by Trump’s trade threats and overtures to Russia. In the view of Michael Clarke, a professor from King’s College London: “The west is dead.”

Yet after warm talks in the White House on Thursday — in which Starmer and Trump lavished praise on each other — there are hopes in London that something can still be salvaged from the wrecked certainties of a postwar order scorned by the US president. “I’m happy,” said Starmer, as he briefly greeted journalists packed into his “Keir Force One” aircraft.