As Amy Boone’s fine essay from Monday here made so clear, the American alt State now running the White House hologram is reverting to Phlogiston thinking in its risible efforts to suggest that Vladimir Putin is dangerously suicidal and therefore certain to invade the Ukraine imminently. The missing element is of course motivation, but it can be explained in terms of Phlogiston, and so when the ethereal Big P goes critical, Vlad the Impaler will be revealed as the Cloven Hoofed One and start bombing Kyiv with blood transfusion bottles. (Today’s new development is that – still in search of electoral glory – Emmanuel Macron has arranged a “breakthrough” in the “stalled peace plan”, which is nifty of Manny given that there’s no war, as such. There’s going to be a Summit in Berlin tomorrow [maybe] and then, um, something or nothing might happen).

At home, Macron is looking safer…