Is Mr Cameron the most parochial PM ever?
We don’t have a Russian policy. Hammond will not say whether or not Britain should go beyond sending lethal equipment and arm the Ukrainian government forces. He told the Commons: “The UK is not planning to do so”, which seemed clear enough. But, he continued, “we could not allow the Ukrainian armed forces to collapse”.
As Ian Bond of the Centre for European Reform told me, this isn’t a strategy, it’s just noise. You either arm Ukraine or you don’t. If you wait until its armed forces are on the point of collapse, it will be too late. But Hammond cannot have a Russian policy, because that would involve co-operation with European allies he and his party would rather die than help.