Bliss it was, just last September, to be the “First Friend” of the United States in the second presidential era of Donald Trump. A successful state visit deployed the “golden coach” strategy to boost the Presidential ego with access to top royals and as much glitz and glamour as the British state could muster. In hard cash terms, the prize was to make the “special relationship” so attractive to Trump that Britain would receive only a mild punishment beating in the US President’s tariff splurge.

Duly, the UK got away with a 10 per cent blanket rate on exports to the US – a relatively benign outcome for car makers, chemical industries and food producers and 25 per cent tariffs on steel, as opposed to the EU’s industry-killing 50 per cent levy.

All that is solid has a propensity to melt in Trumpworld, however. A burgeoning row over Arctic security means that the UK’s hopes of being the US President’s best buddy in Europe are now being trampled in the Greenland snow.

As soon as Sir Keir Starmer aligned with his European allies in defence of Denmark’s continuing oversight of Greenland’s security, the UK has found itself threatened with additional trade penalties – an additional 10 per cent immediately, jumping to 25 per cent from June if we, and other European countries, do not agree to forfeit control of Greenland.

This is a danger to Starmer, who has coddled the administration by avoiding what one Cabinet member describes as “clash-y language”........

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