Even in the darkest, most pessimistic corners of Downing Street, one can imagine a few beaming smiles breaking out. The two-day state visit afforded to US President Donald Trump last week passed off seemingly without a glitch. 

What does “sovereignty” mean in 2025? If you go back 25 years, to the turn of the century, the norm of respecting the sovereignty of other states, at least from invasion or bombing, was, if not cast iron, pretty robust. The world had united to ensure the liberation of Kuwait in 1991.

As the 80th session of the UN General Assembly opens on Tuesday, surely it is time to take stock as to where this gargantuan organization stands eight decades on from its founding.

What to make of a British political leader who pledges to deport 600,000 immigrants in his first term? That is 120,000 people a year. This would even include doing a deal with the Taliban, a movement the UK was fighting against for so many years, to facilitate deportations to Afghanistan.

When anyone looks at the jungle of rubble, twisted metal and collapsed buildings that constitute the graveyard of Palestinian existence in the small but overcrowded strip of land called Gaza, one has to wonder who would want to resurrect it.