So, what do you think about THAT?

With a huff (and a puff), we’ll blow your White House down

So, what do you think? What do you mean what do I think about what? You know very well what.

Some huffs are genuinely funny.

You can hardly imagine that I and Lord Bracknell would dream of allowing our only daughter—a girl brought up with the utmost care—to marry into a cloak-room, and form an alliance with a parcel.

No one huffed better than Oscar Wilde’s Lady Bracknell. In the end her saving grace was that she was expensive, but very, very funny, as Captain Von Trapp would have put it. Captain Von Claptrap over in Washington is less funny. Personally, I’m surprised Zelenskyy stayed as long as he did. But resilience and staying power are the quintessential character traits of many Ukrainians. I’d like to see how long Donald Trump would remain in the White House if Russian tanks were amassed at the gates of his city.

Dame Edith Evans as Lady Bracknell in the 1952 film The Importance of Being Earnest.

It doesn’t really matter whether Mr Zelenskyy thinks he’s right or wrong. The way he was treated was outrageous, nothing less. From the taunting over his mode of dress, to the playground ambush in the cherished Oval Office (does President Zelenskyy not realise how much peace has been schemed for and planned in that cherished room? That it was in that very room that Kissinger, him a war criminal and all, had to persuade Nixon not to nuke Vietnam?))

On day 3 of the war, I think most of us had understood that Zelenskyy would shave and don a suit again once his country was at peace, but meanwhile had other things to do with his time. In three years, Trump hasn’t understood that; or rather has, and has now chosen to weaponise it. Against his own ally. Former ally. A nation at war has no time for sartorial fripperies.

So, there we are, the president in one seat and Beavis and Butthead goading the visitor alongside. An almighty bust-up with cringe factor A+ from the outset. The rest will be history; let us watch it unfold.

Except that some of it unfolded before Mr Zelenskyy even arrived at the Fight House (as The Sun dubbed it). Yesterday morning saw the appearance of a piece by George Monbiot (on his website and also in The Guardian), in which he poses a question that had not exactly been absent from my own mind since the virtual declarations of war on Canada, Panama and Denmark: is Britain ready to defend itself against the United States of America?

That is an outrageous question to have asked even a month ago. But it is one that British defence experts are now seriously asking themselves. Mr Trump has said he would gladly see NATO countries invaded by Russia, if they don’t pay their whack towards world stability. He has been personally wooed by Russia since the time of Gorbachev: questions are starting to be asked about his recruitment as an agent for Russia (a possibility that cannot be excluded is how intelligence experts are putting it). Well, private meetings with Ukraine’s enemy whilst Ukraine and its allies are excluded might just indicate that something was said around that table that was not for Ukraine’s or Europe’s ears.

Meanwhile, Giorgia Meloni is waving her cheerleader’s pom-poms from the sidelines in a vain hope to get noticed by the jocks who are flexing their crotches out on the field, and proposing a roundtable meeting with all parties concerned at her gracious instigation. Does the Italian fascist leader imagine for a second that Trump and Vance will offer their heartfelt apologies for their bullying demands for respect, a screenplay remarkably reminiscent of the opening scenes of The Godfather? Nei tuoi sogni, signora.

Trump’s right on one score. Ukraine has no cards to play, and the United States of America is not about to deal it any. It’s time for Europe to step up with a vengeance and call a spade a spade: Russia’s the enemy, Ukraine’s the ally, and the US is teetering on persona non grata.