Britain needs a new foreign policy. Global circumstance has left behind the familiar balancing act between the US and the Europe. Shuttling between Washington and Brussels belongs to the cold war. The threat from Moscow is now of higher domestic gas prices rather than nuclear annihilation. America’s nuclear submarines lie deep in the Pacific instead of the Atlantic. Sometime in the next few years Britain will have to adjust to a new geopolitical landscape.

Tony Blair, prime minister, has been alert to the threats from Islamist terrorism and the proliferation of unconventional weapons. He has also had a stab at describing the post-Westphalian world in which nation states must accept international intrusion into their domestic affairs.