The guest, host and ghost of British empire

'The British empire laid the foundations of law, liberty, free speech and individual rights virtually everywhere the Union Jack has ever flown, including a place called America. We must continue to stand for the values and the people of the English speaking world.' No, that wasn't Winston Churchill, Thomas Macaulay or even one of those Brown Sahibs who keep nabobing on at Calcutta's - 'Never Kol-kata, always Cal-cutta!' - clubs. That's good old Don Trump speaking in his toast to his host with the most, the British king, at a state banquet laid our for the visiting American monarch.

Over a main course of organic Norfolk chicken ballotine wrapped in courgettes (not to be confused with Buck Palace's resident corgis), Don's toast in the Harry Potter surroundings of Windsor Castle could have been mistaken for a knighthood speech. But Sir Don is yet to rise - that gesture being prime minister Keir Starmer's last desperate resort were Trump to ultimately not be impressed by all this la-di-da orange-nosing. Trump's America now does resemble imperial Britain with its selective fondness for law, liberty, free speech and individual rights (see column above). So's hardly a surprise that Charles Mountbatten-Windsor and Donald John Trump, both with their fine German ancestry, got along so well like a secretly multiculti white house on fire.