The US-North Korea summit ended with warm words but without substance to back them up. Kim Jong Un, the North Korean leader, made no real concessions on his country’s nuclear programme.

And the performance of President Donald Trump at the closing press conference was characteristically bizarre, with the US president urging his audience to think of North Korea “from a real estate perspective”.

The scepticism, however, should not obscure the fact that the situation on the Korean peninsula is now considerably less alarming than it was a year ago. Last August Mr Trump was threatening North Korea with “fire and fury like the world has never seen”, as the Kim regime issued blood-curdling threats to the “mentally deranged US dotard” in the White House.