Something worrisome is happening in the UK. I do not mean that Brexiter-in-chief Boris Johnson has become the prime minister. Or that he has announced the country will leave the EU in 10 and a half weeks, with or without an agreement. Or even that the British economy has begun to contract for the first time in almost seven years.

The chief matter for concern is that the country has been chosen by the US government as the latest battlefield on which to achieve its twin goals of undermining the EU, and challenging its rival China. There are many Britons who reject President Donald Trump’s policies and see the way he deploys his country’s influence against Europe as unacceptable interference. But British society is so deeply divided — politically, socially, geographically and generationally — that it is unable to react. The UK has become a mere chessboard, a toy in the hands of a force far greater than that of its inhabitants: the geopolitical interests of the Trump administration.

This month, Mr Trump sent his chief national security adviser, John Bolton, to London to make clear to the British prime minister what is expected of him. Mr Bolton’s name may sound familiar: during the George W Bush administration, as under-secretary of state for arms control and international security, he asserted that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and became one of the architects of the disastrous war whose consequences we are still reaping.