The last time that Britain stood truly alone, in 1941, George Orwell wrote of his comrades on the political left that they were “sometimes squashily pacifist, sometimes violently pro-Russian, but always anti-British”. The next moment of British isolation may now beckon, brought closer by a European escapade of the Tory right and a Labour leadership that perfectly answers Orwell’s mocking description.

Jeremy Corbyn is something of a squashy pacifist but his spokesman Seumas Milne is violently pro-Russian and Mr Corbyn is a weak man. Their combined response to the poisoning of Sergei Skripal in Salisbury was a disgrace. Eventually Mr Corbyn had it dragged out of him, after a joint statement by France, Germany, the US and the UK, that the evidence in the case