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Reports this week suggest that the EU is seeking a so-called 'Farage Clause' in its Brexit reset negotiations with the UK. Under the proposal, Britain would be forced to hand over compensation to the EU if a future UK Government reneges on any deal struck now by Keir Starmer.

The news comes some eight months since the last UK-EU summit which unveiled the first details of this 'reset' in relations promised by the then new Labour Government.

Everything else announced at last May's summit was aspirational, including statements made about the other three areas highlighted by Labour during the election.

Two of these, mutual recognition of professional qualifications and new provisions for touring artists, were not prioritized by the summit. Only the third UK priority was among those given more prominence, a 'sanitary and phytosanitary' (SPS) agreement on food and agricultural trade. A Youth Mobility Scheme, initially resisted by the UK but desired by the EU, was also among the prominent possibilities.

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Since the summit, little progress has been made on realizing these aspirations. The only new agreement has been for the UK to join the Erasmus+ study exchange programme from 2027.

On the other hand, negotiations for the UK to participate in the EU's SAFE defence procurement scheme have ended in failure. Now, although there are several other issues under negotiation, most attention focuses on an SPS agreement and an agreement to link UK and EU emissions trading schemes (ETS).

The potential deals on SPS and ETS share a particular feature, which is that both would require the UK to agree to 'dynamic alignment' with EU regulations and, with that, some role for the European Courts of Justice (ECJ). Politically, this makes them anathema to Brexiters, and they have come on to the agenda because an ECJ role was the only one of the previous Conservative Government's Brexit 'red lines' which Labour have, very quietly, dropped.

Even so, for a long time Labour ministers tried to imply that these deals would be possible without dynamic alignment. But this was never realistic, and it has recently been reported that Starmer's Government is preparing legislation to enable such regulatory alignment in these two areas, and perhaps others. This suggests, although there has been no announcement of it, that agreement on SPS and ETS is imminent.

One issue which may still be under negotiation is what is being reported as the EU's requirement for a 'Farage clause'. This, it appears, would be a guarantee of compensation in the event of a future UK Government reneging on SPS, ETS, or other related agreements. It has a particular salience because both Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch have indicated that if they came to power then they would reverse agreements made with the EU by the Labour Government.

The 'Farage clause' reports are significant because this is perhaps the first time something widely discussed by commentators has been repeated by officials, albeit they are unnamed. It shows that domestic UK politics constitutes a real block on a substantive reset, something which applies even more strongly to more ambitious ideas about joining the EU, or the Single Market, or creating a UK-EU Customs Union. For, so long as there is no settled political consensus about closer post-Brexit relations with the EU, and every possibility that the next government will be ferociously opposed to closer relations, there are significant risks to the EU in reaching agreements with the present Government.

It often used to be remarked during th...

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"I'm f***ing freezing, like an ice cube" says Viktor, a Polish homeless man huddled in Old Street Station to shelter from the bitterly cold weather.

Unlike parts of the UK, London has not been covered in snow by Storm Goretti, though it has experienced freezing temperatures, strong winds, heavy rain and a arctic air that means you don't want to be caught outside for too long.

Temperatures at night over recent days have reached as low as -7 in London. While other people can escape the worst of the cold at home, for rough sleepers like Viktor extreme weather presents a struggle for survival.

Viktor has enough to pay for a hostel tonight, though he doesn't always. He often struggles for funds at the weekend when there are fewer commuters to give him change. On those days he shelters in "phone boxes where it's not that cold. Though it is still cold below the knees. Sometimes I fire up newspapers to warm me up".

According to Crisis, the homelessness charity, around 15,000 people slept rough last year in the UK. Figures from the Combined Homelessness and Information Network show that between April 2024 and March 2025, around 13,000 people slept rough in London.

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Charities warn that they are at acute risk from the cold weather. Francesca Albanese, executive director of policy and social change at Crisis, said:

"Rough sleeping is extremely dangerous all year round, but a night spent in freezing temperatures or in the most extreme weather can be deadly. It's vital that people who would otherwise be sleeping on the streets are helped into safe, emergency accommodation".

This is done by a process called the Severe Weather Emergency Protocol or SWEP. Although not a legal requirement, most local authorities have SWEP procedures in place which provide emergency housing for homeless people in extreme weather situations.

The fact that it is not a legal requirement has led to criticism over how London has handled the recent spate of cold weather. London activated its SWEP on January 3, but deactivated it three days later because forecasts predicted temperatures above 0.

The charity Streets Kitchen which does cold outreach, branded the move "life threatening" and told the Metro newspaper that: "For too long, the safety of our city's most vulnerable has relied on a 'humanitarian duty' rather than a legal mandate."

Peter O'Grady, Director of Food For All, a charity which runs a food bank and a soup kitchen in King's Cross told Byline Times that they had seen more visitors since the weather got colder. "It's grim out there" he said. "You wouldn't think this would happen in a country like England which has so much wealth" he added.

TJ, another homeless man who sleeps in a doorway in Old Street, and sits outside a shop is in contact with Street Link, a service which connects homeless people to their local services. He hopes they can find him a room. Living homeless on and off for the last few years, he told Byline Times that this time he'd been on the street since the 21st of December. "It's very wet and cold. But I've just got to do what I do. I suppose I'm torturing myself [sitting here]".

The Mayor's office reactivated the SWEP for the past weekend. A Greater London Authority spokesperson said: "We need to ensure vulnerable people are protected in adverse weather.

"City Hall's rough sleeping team are regularly reviewing SWEP to make sure it continues to fulfil its vital purpose to support those most in need. They are continuing to monitor temperatures this week and have activated SWEP this weekend with freezing temperatures forecast.

"The Mayor is c...

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Impending spot checks to see how well e-gaming firms and online casinos are deploying measures against financial crimes and terrorism funding have left the Crown Dependency of the Isle of Man badly exposed, a leading authority on Anti Money Laundering (AML), has told Byline Times.

"This is where the Isle of Man definitely has a high risk of being grey-listed," said Dr Ilaria Zavoli, a senior researcher at the University of Leeds, adding: "What I see is not positive."

Grey listing is an international designation for jurisdictions with strategic financial-crime and terrorism-funding deficiencies and can trigger rapid 'de-risking' by investors.

The warning comes ahead of a critical inspection of the Irish Sea island's regulatory health next year by Moneyval, the European partner to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF); inter-governmental bodies which combat the financing of terrorism and global cybercrime worth $15Tn a year – a figure set to reach 20Tn in 2026, making it the second biggest economy behind China.

Inspectors are expecting a series of legislative improvements at the Crown Dependency – first called for in 2016 – alongside effective implementation of financial crime protections within the 148 companies it currently regulates.

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Dr Zavoli, a lawyer whose academic work informs UK AML policy on property and construction, said: "The Isle of Man Government must show both that it has the tools to fight money laundering and economic crime and that it's using them properly.

"The inspectors will go into businesses directly and ask them, for example, how their suspicious activity reports and anti-money laundering checks work in daily practice?

"They will not be fooled by fine words and box ticking. This will be the main channel of risk for grey-listing."

Finding itself in the company of Botswana, Albania and Lebanon on an FATF-body grey list could cost the Isle of Man 11% of its £6bn economy, according to Government predictions.

At £660m a year, it would take just three years to equal the island's entire circa-£2bn cash reserves, while posing real risk to its prized AA3 credit rating.

The Isle of Man financial services sector has suffered a string of damaging headlines in the last 18 months. Last year a United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) report called the island a "transnational laundromat" for Asian crime groups exploiting "under-regulated" online gambling platforms, while Manx structures have also been implicated in so-called "pig-butchering" crypto scams – long-con investment frauds linked to human-trafficking.

Last month, a Financial Times investigation raised serious questions about the due diligence carried out by the Isle of Man Government in relation to King Gaming, a company under investigation over "huge" allegations of fraud and international money laundering.

Further, day-to-day governance on the island will soon be falling under the Moneyval spotlight. These include a £90m court case featuring allegations, denied by the Manx Department of Infrastructure and its Treasury, of unlawful interference and misfeasance in public office over the award of an infrastructure contract, a saga that has left Douglas locals exasperated and missing a new bus station, shops, and homes first promised more than a decade ago.

"Moneyval looks at all aspects of the way the island is run when it makes its grey listing decisions," says Dr Zavoli. "Definitely they will care about this. If there is any suggestion of corruption in public offices that obviously has a reputational threat to th...

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A group of more than 100 detainees say that they have been subjected to extreme physical, psychological and emotional abuse at two immigration removal centres.

A report produced by asylum seekers at Harmondsworth and Brook House alleges that guards have intimidated, humiliated and been physically abusive towards them. The group is calling for access to legal representation and healthcare and the respect for universal human rights.

"We are not criminals; we are refugees seeking safety and freedom," they said in a statement. "Our only 'crime' was crossing the English Channel and requesting asylum."

They added: "Healthcare is inadequate, legal representation is denied, families are isolated, and basic human rights are violated. People are mentally deteriorating due to constant fear, harassment, and uncertainty about their fate… Our lives are at risk."

Their report includes incidents of alleged abuse, including the removal of several people "taken to France against their will" under the government's 'one in, one out scheme'.

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One Ethiopian man reported being physically beaten for protesting his removal. The group says that the families of those who have been deported to France under the scheme are given no information about their relatives' location or welfare, raising serious safety concerns.

In one case, a man with severe mental health issues was told he could not access treatment because he already had a plane ticket to France. Several detainees have attempted suicide but been dismissed without adequate treatment or psychological support, the report found.

In October 2025, charity Medical Justice told the Home Affairs Select Committee that all those people its clinicians had assessed in immigration removal centres, who had been detained pending removal, had a serious mental health condition. Suicidal thoughts were "alarmingly common" with several people stating that they wished to die rather than be deported to France.

Emma Ginn, Director of Medical Justice said: "Clinical safeguards in UK immigration detention do not operate as intended, and fail to identify, protect and route out vulnerable people unsuitable for detention. The harm caused by immigration detention is widely acknowledged."

In 2023, the Brook House Inquiry identified a "toxic culture" and "credible evidence" of breaches of human rights law including the use of racist, derogatory language by some staff towards detainees. The Inquiry followed a BBC Panorama documentary in which guards at the detention centre were seen adopting use-of-force techniques to provoke or punish people. The programme also showed the endemic use of drugs, the failure to report incidents of attempted suicide and the frequent racial abuse of detainees.

Last year, three individuals took legal action against the Government for its failure to comply with the 33 recommendations in the Brook House Inquiry final report. The claimants, who were all former immigration detainees, said that they had been subject to mistreatment. They argued that neither the Conservative nor the Labour governments have taken steps to comply with the recommendations and have actively weakened safeguards through their policies, putting greater numbers of vulnerable people at risk of harm in detention.

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A British citizen has been "left stranded" in Hungary with her two children while attempting to bring her 13-year-old niece to the UK.

Natali is the girl's legal guardian and has full parental responsibility for the child, who was previously in state care. Yesterday the Home Office refused her niece a visa to settle in the UK under the EU Settlement Scheme, citing a lack of evidence.

Despite providing all of the required documentation, including translated copies of birth certificates showing evidence of a family relationship, the Home Office stated that the child would be refused settlement as "admission to the UK is not necessary to safeguard the child's best interests."

Natali is a settled UK resident with indefinite leave to remain under the EU Settlement Scheme. A UK Home Study Assessment by Hartlepool's Children's Services confirmed that she can provide a safe and loving home for her niece.

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She fears that her niece, who was abandoned by her parents in May 2025, will now be sent back to institutional care.

"I am stuck in Hungary, trapped between two impossible choices," said Natali. "I must either stay here, which isn't my children's home, or return to the UK without my niece, abandoning her back into state care. That would be highly traumatic for her."

She added: "I have met every requirement, submitted every document and followed instructions from both governments, in the UK and in Hungary. I am trying to remain calm but I am exhausted and running out of funds. I can't even fuel my car. I don't know what more I can do."

Natali travelled to Hungary on 1 November to bring her niece to their local UKVI centre for a biometric appointment and to submit final paperwork. The child protection application was made on November 7. Following the appointment at the UKVI centre, the family were informed the process would be swift as they had paid for priority processing.

The Home Office refusal was issued without prior clarification or further request for documents. Official court and social service records had been provided, alongside birth certificates indicating that the teenager was related to Natali and that she had been in state care after being abandoned by her parents.

Alongside concerns for her niece, Natali fears that further delays will mean that her two children, who were born and raised in the UK, face attendance and safeguarding penalties by local authorities when they return to Britain.

"My children are missing school and separated from their father," she said. "They are stuck in a foreign country where they cannot speak the language and struggle to communicate with anyone except me. It is an impossible situation."

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Prior to the visa refusal, Natali's local MP Jonathan Brash had attempted to urgently contact the Home Office to emphasise that this is a child protection and family reunification case supported by the UK and Hungarian authorities. The Home Office response indicated that the visa application would take longer to process as the family are outside the UK.

The department said in its refusal letter that the final decision took into accoun...

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At two in the morning, Venezuelan time, on January 3 the lights went out across Caracas. Within hours, the geopolitical architecture of the Western Hemisphere had been violently rearranged.

Under cover of a cyber-induced blackout, the United States launched Operation Absolute Resolve – a massive, multi-domain military intervention that culminated in the extrajudicial capture and rendition of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

The White House has framed this as being a decisive law enforcement action against a "narco-terrorist" regime. President Donald Trump declared the US was now "in charge" of Venezuela, with Maduro jailed in New York.

However, the players and financial interests behind the raid reveal something far more troubling. The move not only dovetails with longstanding Russian attempts, since 2017, to encourage Trump to consider annexing Venezuela, in return for allowing Russia to take control of Ukraine, further evidence unearthed by Byline Times also ties it to tech industry plans to turn a sovereign nation into a laboratory for Silicon Valley's most radical experiment: the "Network State."

The 'Network State' Laboratory

The US fossil fuel industry spent some $445 million through the last election cycle to influence Donald Trump and US Congress, and donated $19 million to Trump's inauguration ceremonies.

Yet the American shale boom which has buoyed the US economy for the last decade is inexorably slowing down. Industry insiders and even conventional forecasts acknowledge that US shale oil and gas production is likely to peak this decade, hitting a long plateau before a decline that steadily shaves off the traditional foundations of US prosperity.

Grabbing Venezuelan oil, at least on paper, compensates for this coming energy crisis – expanding the total fossil fuel resources, boosting oil stock prices and conveying to global markets that US oil majors are here to stay.

However, for pro-Trump Silicon Valley figures like Peter Thiel, Balaji Srinivasan, and Marc Andreessen, the annexation of Venezuela represents a business opportunity of a different kind.

They are proponents of what Srinivasan has branded the "Network State" – a movement seeking to fragment existing nations into proprietary, market-governed enclaves or "startup societies". Venezuela, broken by sanctions and now decapitated by military force, offers the potential of being the ultimate tabula rasa.

The intellectual blueprint for this intervention began years ago.

Founder of the Charter Cities Institute Mark Lutter, who in 2018 received funding from the Thiel-backed Emergent Ventures for work "on charter cities and also an attempt to create a new charter city", previously discussed authoring a white paper on Venezuela premised on a "transfer of power". The paper was never released to the public.

In a 2019 conversation Mark Lutter and 80,000 Hours podcast host Robert Wiblin talked about how to capitalise on the forcible removal of the Venezuelan Government. Speaking seven years before the US eventually decapitated the regime, the pair spoke about the sovereignty of the country as being a mere obstacle to economic experimentation. Wiblin, a former Executive Director at the Centre for Effective Altruism – the philosophical engine room for a significant faction of Silicon Valley – hypothesised a scenario where "Maduro gets removed" without saying by what means. Lutter revealed that his Centre for Innovative Governance Research was already drafting a white paper based on the "assumption" that this "transfer of power" would occur.

Crucially, Lutter framed this regime change as a necessary precondition for his ideology to take root. He argued that a post-Maduro Government, likely operating in a state of desperation, would be "willing to adopt ideas that otherwise they might not be willing to adopt" – specifically, handing ...

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In what Will Sommer at The Bulwark has described as the first time the "[Trump] administration has offered assistance to someone from Canada", the US State Department has intervened to reinstate the visa of Laura (Lauren) Chen, co-founder of an illegally funded media outlet aimed at reaching American audiences with Russian propaganda.

Chen, the Canadian founder of Tenet Media on YouTube – which provided a platform to several right-wing commentators including Tim Pool, Benny Johnson and Dave Rubin – was exposed in 2024 for taking $10 million from staff at Russia's state broadcaster RT.

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According to the indictment, two RT employees channelled money through a shell "investment" arrangement into Tenet, which then paid prominent American right-wing influencers to produce videos attacking Ukraine aid, praising Donald Trump and amplifying divisive domestic themes. Chen lost her US work status and returned to Canada after the scandal, but has now been allowed to re-enter the United States

According to Chen's recent posts on Instagram and X, her new visa was secured with assistance from officials in the Trump Administration, specifically Joe Rittenhouse, a senior adviser on consular affairs at the State Department, whom she thanked publicly by name.

Rittenhouse replied: "This Christmas, I'm so happy to help correct the wrongs of the past administration. Being able to bring Lauren and her family back for Christmas would not be possible without new Leadership at the White House, FBI, CBP, and State Department."

A few days earlier, in response to Secretary of State Marco Rubio's announcements of sanctions against five Europeans, Rittenhouse celebrated by reposting a GIF from the far-right British influencer Carl Benjamin, "You get what you fucking deserve!"

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These sanctions – prompting EU condemnation – targeted the mastermind of the Digital Services Act, Thierry Breton, and four other individuals who work on detecting online hate speech, extremism and disinformation; Claree Melfod, the co-founder and leader of the Global Disinformation Index: Anna-Lena von Hodenberg and Josephine Ballon, the two CEOs of HateAid, which provides legal support for victims of online hate speech: and Imran Ahmed, founder of the Center for Countering Digital Hate.

Rittenhouse, who retweets the far-right EDL founder Tommy Robinson, and regularly amplifies both Carl Benjamin and Tenet Media's Tim Pool, commented on the announcement of the ban – "inject into my veins… I love my job" – implying he was involved in the sanctions as well as welcoming back Tenet Media's co-founder.

The support for Russian paid for influencers spreading disinformation, compared to the US State Department's targeting of Europeans investigating it, could hardly be more stark.

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The Tenet scheme sits alongside a wider Kremlin influence system overseen by Sergei Kiriyenko, first deputy head of the Presidential Administration.

With the demise of Sergey Prigozhin and his infamous troll farms, the Kreml...

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Keir Starmer's spokesman on Wednesday insisted that "all options are on the table" to stop Elon Musk's X site from generating "completely unacceptable" deepfake sexual images of children, but would not commit the UK Government to taking specific direct action against them.

Asked by Byline Times why the Government has not followed through on the Prime Minister's commitment at the end of last year to ban any apps producing such deep fakes, the Prime Minister's spokesman said that "we won't allow" the practice to continue, but would not commit to either implementing a ban, or to stop posting there.

"What we've seen on Grok is a disgrace," the spokesman said.

"It is completely unacceptable. No one should have to go through the ordeal, of seeing intimate deep flakes of themselves online, and we won't allow the proliferation of these demeaning images."

Producing sexual deepfakes of children is a crime in the UK.

However, Starmer's spokesman suggested that it was an issue for the independent media regulator Ofcom to deal with, in the first instance.

"X needs to deal with this urgently" they said.

"And Ofcom has our full backing to take enforcement action wherever firms are failing to protect UK users.

"It already has the power to issue fines of up to billions of pounds and even stop access to a site that is violating the law.

"And when it comes to keeping people safe online, all options remain on the table."

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Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has spoken repeatedly in the past about her passion for protecting children from sexual abuse, in relation to child grooming gangs.

However, her spokesman also failed to call for direct action against X.

He told reporters on Wednesday that "we are very clear that what is happening with those Grok deep fakes is absolutely disgusting, and there has to be something done to stop that."

However, he would not say what that something should be.

"I'm not about to announce policy here. We haven't sat down and thought about how we would go about that. But I don't want it there to be any doubt here in our condemnation of what is going on."

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Boris Johnson's Government acted in "blind panic" in signing a deal with the Duchy of Cornwall to lease an unusable radon gas filled prison in Dartmoor, which will needlessly cost taxpayers over £100m, a new Parliamentary report has found.

An investigation by the Commons Public Accounts Committee reveals for the first time the full scale of the contract to lease HMP Dartmoor and the repercussions for the taxpayer, before any remedial work to remove the radon gas can be undertaken. Radon gas is highly dangerous and can cause cancer.

In 2022 under Dominic Rabb, the justice secretary and Deputy Prime Minister, signed a deal with Prince William's Duchy of Cornwall, who own the prison.

Byline Times revealed in 2024 the existence of the deal which would bring in £1.5 million a year for the Prince.

But now MPs show the costs to the taxpayer are far higher. The contract from 2023 is for 10 years, bringing in a total of £15m for William plus another £25 million to cover security and rates. In addition, the ministry agreed to pay £68m from taxpayer funds for structural improvements to the prison. All this is before any remedial work to deal with the radon gas. The ministry had commissioned a report on the extent of the gas but signed the deal before it received its findings. The 10 year contract cannot be broken until 2033.

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Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, Conservative chair of the committee, said:

"The issue of HMP Dartmoor is an absolute disgrace, from top to bottom. We heard claims that the leasing of this unusable building, known for years by HM Prison and Probation Service to be choked with radon gas with all the health risks that entailed, was sensible, driven by the need for prison places. Our Committee rejects this excuse outright.

"Dartmoor appears to the Committee a perfect example of a department reaching for a solution, any solution, in a blind panic and under pressure. This is, obviously, not how policy should be delivered. Government must now respond to us on what it has learned from this catastrophic failure, and how nothing like it will ever be allowed to happen again."

The report reveals that all remedial work to remove radon gas has been abandoned awaiting a report from the Health and Safety Executive. The ministry has still not decided what to do with the prison.

The report is also critical of another issue involving the ministry of justice dating back to previous successive Conservative governments– the reform and administration of the legal aid system made over a decade ago.

This restricted access to legal aid and at the same time previous governments failed to raise legal aid fees. As a result the legal aid became inaccessible for many of the most vulnerable – among the 24%of people who have no digital access including disabled people and people in housing debt.

Clifton-Brown said: "On legal aid, the reforms of a decade ago are now at serious risk of going down in history as an extinction event for the entitlement to access to legal advice in large parts of the country.

"Our report finds government remaining stubbornly uninterested in whether this is the case, but it must now wake up on this subject. If it refuses to, the Ministry of Justice should, frankly, consider changing its name to the Ministry of Justice (for Certain People). This might be more appropriate for a nation without a sustainable solution in the long-term to provide legal aid to the digitally-excluded quarter of the population who need it most."

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Like so much that Donald Trump has done since he returned to the White House, the US attack on Venezuela and capture of its President was shocking but not surprising.

It was shocking because of its flagrant violation of international and US law.

However, it was unsurprising, because Trump has for the past year signalled his aggressive intent towards Venezuela, while making clear in his recent National Security Strategy that he had a right to intervene anywhere in the Western hemisphere, regardless of legal constraints, under what he dubbed the "Donroe Doctrine".

And yet Trump's ruthless assertion of the Donroe Doctrine did somehow manage to take at least some by surprise. European leaders were not only blindsided in the sense that Trump had declined to offer even the elementary courtesy of forewarning close allies of the impending action to remove Nicolas Maduro from power.

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Judging by their fumbling response, they appear not to have anticipated that the US President may have been serious when he laid claim to the western hemisphere as an exclusive US sphere of influence. The result is that Europe now finds itself plunged into a deep geopolitical crisis for which it appears entirely unprepared.

To be fair to Europe's leaders, Trump's action placed them in a near-impossible position. They have spent the past four years trying to rally global support for Ukraine on the basis that Russia's invasion was in breach of Article 2 (4) of the UN Charter which prohibits 'the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state'.

Now they face a choice between condemning the US action in Venezuela as a breach of international law, and thereby risking Trump's wrath, or backing his action and being branded hypocrites. Most have chosen to sit on the fence, with Sir Keir Starmer offering the most mealy-mouthed response of the lot.

This European pusillanimity is deeply worrying because Europe's own interests are directly threatened by the Donroe Doctrine. Sounding like a mob boss when speaking at Trump's press conference at the weekend, secretary of state Marco Rubio told the world that the message of the Venezuelan intervention was that when this president says he is serious about wanting something, he gets it.

The problem for Europe is that the one thing that this President covets above all is Greenland. Indeed, Trump has since reiterated his determination to annex Greenland from Denmark, a NATO ally and EU member, insisting that America needs it for its national security.

Europe can no longer be under any illusion that Trump is anything other than deadly serious about acquiring Greenland. What's more, the US President has not ruled out using force if necessary. That leaves Europeans facing a desperate dilemma. If Trump was not deflected from attacking Venezuela by concern for international law, then he is unlikely to be deterred from seizing Greenland by pious declarations from European capitals.

On the other hand, if he did take Greenland by force – which would be far easier than capturing Maduro – then that would mark the end of NATO, with potentially disastrous consequences for European security.

Europe may thus soon find itself facing a choice: does it care more about preserving Danish sovereignty over Greenland, which it may not in any case be within its capabilities, or preserving what remains of the NATO alliance, which remains vital to maintaining security on its eastern flank from a hostile Russia?

This is not a choice that any European leader ever expected to have to fac...