Among other surprising things, President Trump has given new prominence to the normally quiet subject of overseas territories. Only four months ago - it seems far longer, given the other, more serious events since - Mr Trump made realistic threats to take over the Danish territory of Greenland “the easy way or the hard way”.

Since then, he has reversed (again) his support for the deal with Mauritius to hand over the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT - also known as the Chagos Islands), while preserving the British naval and air base which is of high value to the Americans. In this he seems to have been encouraged by some British politicians, whose foreign policy instincts seem nearer today’s White House than British long-term interests, especially if they can complicate life for the current Government.

The reverberations of the US war in Iran have put the British Sovereign Base Areas in Cyprus in the spotlight. Iran’s Hizbollah allies in Lebanon fired three missiles or drones towards the base. Two were shot down by British air defences; a third hit a hut at RAF Akrotiri. Nonetheless, the Cyprus Government reasoned that this potentially dangerous attack on the island wouldn’t have happened if the base wasn’t there. It has reopened its longstanding dissatisfaction with the Sovereign Bases, with a view to getting rid of them.

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And then the Falklands. At one level, it is a sad sign of how much of the world, certainly including Britain, can be thrown into concern bordering on panic by the hint of a raised eyebrow in Washington. In this case, a leaked........

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