The French president Emmanuel Macron borrowed some lines from Hugh Grant about bullies at the World Economic Forum in Davos. His target was Donald Trump, who had leaked a conciliatory text message from Macron who, evidently, was trying to get the US president to the table to shore up the rapidly disintegrating global order.

In the love-it-or-hate-it Christmas film Love Actually, Grant – playing the foppish British prime minister of the day – confronts the US president, saying: “A friend who bullies us is no longer a friend, and since bullies only respond to strength, from now onward, I will be prepared to be much stronger.”

We are now in an era where truth is stranger than fiction, if you can find the truth at all.

Macron’s text message was about Greenland, which has been at the centre of a classic Trumpian play to use his position to provoke a reaction thereby illustrating his power. His threat to impose tariffs on Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands and Finland because of their opposition to American control of Greenland achieved its aim.

Europe scrambled to respond, considering retaliatory tariffs, increased customs duties and limiting or blocking access to US goods, services or........

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