The political landscape is about to change on both sides of the pond with Donald Trump in the ascendency - Patrick Mercer

A failed assassination, a Presidential resignation and the probable appointment of Kamala Harris to run for the top job are hardly worth discussing. They all point, I believe, to a victory for Donald Trump on November 5. I reckon he’ll have a clean sweep carrying the Senate and the House of Representatives with him, giving him tremendous power, but plunging the US into years of recrimination and chaos.

I don’t think we should underestimate the schisms that President Trump will have to face whilst his many opponents will be incensed by ‘JD’ Vance as the new vice president. He’s obviously intending to brandish Trumpism through and beyond the election after next.

And if domestic matters are going to be hard to predict, what of foreign affairs? I have no doubt that a new US Commander in Chief will have his eyes firmly fixed on China and that country’s approach to Taiwan. Now, whilst the US and NATO cannot afford to get directly involved in Ukraine, they can’t afford not to help Taipei City should it come under attack. The same applies in the Middle East and all this will leave Mssrs Putin and Lavrov - Russia’s wily foreign minister - rubbing their hands with glee.

In parallel, President Zelensky will be feeling very isolated as everyone comes to terms with the new order. Imagine how furious Kiev was when several brigades at the front used their social media accounts to shriek that, regrettably, President Trump had cheated death. They did this just as their president was trying his damnedest to accommodate Donald Trump who had bragged that he would end the war ‘within 24 hours’ - even before he’d been formally inducted as President.

And this caused Ukraine’s boss to execute a remarkable u-turn saying, “We can end the hot stage of the war before the end of this year… it doesn’t mean that all territories must be recaptured… but we must be strong on the battlefield”.

Employing supreme realpolitik, Mr Zelensky has recognised that Ukraine cannot prevail over Russia if the stream of cash and weapons from America is going to cease in the next few months and that he may have to cede territory.

Germany has also said that she will cut her aid to Kiev by half next year, but it’s the issue of long range missiles which has exposed not just British politicians’ poor grip of the realities of the situation in Ukraine, but our utter dependence upon the Americans’ say so.

That drama started in May when Lord Cameron, then the foreign secretary, gave permission for British Storm Shadow missiles to be launched, “deep into Russia”. No other NATO donor had allowed such freedom of action because they knew how provoked the Kremlin would be.

Mercifully, the noble lord was ignored. No missiles were used beyond the battlefields in Ukraine, despite President Zelensky’s obvious delight that Britain had given the go ahead. Then, Sir Keir Starmer, as one of his very first acts as prime minister, confirmed that Kiev could use the same missiles against Russia when he met Ukraine’s premier at the recent NATO summit. He was ignored as well.

Presumably, neither Cameron nor Starmer fully grasped that beyond the escalation argument lies the fact that our specialists have to be on Ukrainian soil to fire these missiles and that launching them at mainland Russia would certainly cause British casualties. In any event, it was soon made clear that using Storm Shadow against strategic targets would require the permission of France (who jointly manufacture the missiles with us) and ‘one other nation’.

Clearly, that other nation was the USA. In other words - words that can never be spoken - the Pentagon must give its permission for a supposedly sovereign Britain to use her own weapons.

Then came our new defence secretary’s coded phrases to the BBC just before Mr Zelensky appealed in person to the cabinet last Friday. John Healey said the UK’s provision of Storm Shadow “does not preclude them hitting targets in Russia, but that must be done by the Ukrainians” which, once translated, means that no Brits can get involved in launching missiles unless or until Uncle Sam says so.

This level of cack handedness and ignorance of what’s going in Ukraine by both the outgoing and incoming governments of this country is simply dangerous. As confederates of President Biden’s neocons, Britain has played a leading role in the needless and immoral war that is killing countless numbers of young Ukrainians and Russians. What’s more, it’s depressing to think that although the Tories’ worst militarists have been decapitated, Labour intends to continue with the same hypocrisy.

Patrick Mercer is a former MP for Newark and Army colonel.