Theresa May defending the decision to join the attack on Syria yesterday. She said there was ‘no practicable alternative’ to the use of force, which was right and legal

When Donald Trump spoke to Theresa May on Thursday to discuss their planned airstrikes on Syria, the US president was far more subdued than he had been three days earlier when he warned Russia and its client dictator, Bashar al-Assad, that his “nice and new and smart” missiles “will be coming”.

That outburst exasperated ministers and highlighted the difficulty of standing shoulder to shoulder with an ally who shoots from the lip.

“When Trump started tweeting he hadn’t even had his intelligence briefing,” said one cabinet source. “He was speaking without having the first clue of what he was talking about.”

How Trump and May infuriated Putin

When May gathered her cabinet on Wednesday at least two ministers called Trump’s tweets “unhelpful”. Throughout Whitehall there was frustration that the president had