Climbdown

Thursday's court appearance as he waited for his case to be heard was a humiliating climbdown for the flamboyant Texan, who sports the clipped mustache and Saville Row style of English aristocracy.

There will be “a cost” to the government’s climbdown on welfare changes at the budget, one of Keir Starmer’s senior ministers has said, as a leading fiscal thinktank said new tax rises appeared increasingly likely.

The reward for this climbdown is Tehran’s agreement to reopen the strait of Hormuz, the strategic energy chokepoint through which roughly 20% of the world’s oil passes – and which was open until the US and Israel began unleashing military strikes on 28 February.