Iran

You’d think when your country goes to war you’d want it to prevail, but these are topsy-turvy times. Thus the dominant American commentary on Donald Trump’s "excursion" in the Middle East – or should we call it a "special military operation?" – has come from pundits who yearn for Epic Fury to fail. Close-up and personal antipathy for their President far outweighs theoretical distaste for a tyrannical theocracy in another hemisphere. For these critics, the glaring deficiencies of the "Memorandum of Understanding," Trump’s already shaky negotiated peace deal, are gratifying. I’m not one of those people.

Home Andy Burnham, who was expected to become prime minister on 20 July, took off his tie and put on a dark T-shirt for a speech in which he said he would establish a ‘No. 10 North’ in Manchester as the ‘nerve centre of a rewired Britain’. He promised council houses, welfare reform and ‘good growth in every postcode’ by means of ‘Manchesterism’. He took no questions. Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, presented the delayed defence investment plan, and said that spending would rise by £15 billion by 2030. He landed his successor with £4.7 billion of the sum being left unfunded. The Ministry of Defence would also have to find £10.7 billion in efficiency savings in the next four years.

Whisper it if you must, but it looks as if Gianni (‘Today I feel gay…’) Infantino might have got it right with Fifa’s jumbo-busting World Cup, all 48 teams, 104 games and 39 days of it. Just look at some of the results: forget the Norwegians ‘Viking row’, Messi’s relentless brilliance, magnificent Mbappé, even wise Emma Hayes and her kitchen chalkboard. Look at tiny Cape Verde. With a population of 530,000, about the size of Bristol, it’s one-fifth the size of Jamaica, half that of Mauritius and one-third less than Gran Canaria. But they have been handling football’s aristocrats with the fervour of a French revolutionary execution party.