The strategic splintering of the West is the single greatest danger we face, dwarfing in its long-term implications even the fallout from Brexit or the impact of last week’s election on the US economy. In the absence of a western alliance with the will and capacity to act together, diplomatically and militarily, every adventurer and trouble-maker in the world – from Moscow to Pyongyang, to the terrorist hideouts of the Sahel and the Hindu Kush – will feel bolder and stronger.

Britain is in a better position than most to set out to save the unity of the West, and so has a special responsibility to do so. When you are foreign secretary, you see every day the mass of co-operation around the globe between the US and the UK: if Trump reads his diplomatic cables and intelligence reports attentively, he will notice that, too. When you go to Nato headquarters in Brussels, you are a big player – more so than in the EU – with the most clout after the US itself. And when you sit down with your colleagues there, you are between the American secretary of state and the Turkish foreign minister: an accident of the alphabet but one that symbolises the reach of British influence across the alliance.