It is not just Donald Trump who believes Keir Starmer has failed to channel Winston Churchill. Now Cyprus have given the Prime Minister’s leadership a tongue-lashing.

Kyriacos Kouros, the country’s high commissioner to the UK, has drawn unfavourable comparisons between the responses of France and Britain to Iran’s drone attack on the RAF base on Cyprus. ‘The French are coming,’ said Kouros. ‘The least we expect is the Britons to also be present since, as I said, we are not only defending Cypriots on the islands.’

According to the Times, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates are also less than impressed with Britain’s conduct in the Middle East since Israel and the US launched Saturday’s attack on Iran. Their main beef is Britain’s delay in allowing American aircraft to use their joint bases to conduct strikes against Iranian targets. On Thursday, France announced that some of its airbases in the Middle East were temporarily hosting American aircraft ‘as part of our relationship with the United States’. A French military spokesman said: ‘These aircraft contribute to the protection of our partners in the Gulf.’

The dithering of Starmer, forever fretting about ‘international law’, is in marked contrast to the decisiveness of Emmanuel Macron. It’s almost as if the French President – who has a habit of bashing Britain – has spotted an opportunity to humiliate perfidious Albion.

As Trump was busy tearing a strip off Starmer on Tuesday for being ‘unhelpful’, the president praised France for their response to the war in the Middle East. They had been ‘great’, he said.

A few hours later, Macron addressed France in a television broadcast. He tut-tutted about the legality of the US/Israeli strikes and said he ‘cannot approve of them’. But in his next breath the president announced he was despatching the aircraft carrier the Charles de Gaulle and its strike group to the Mediterranean. The group includes fighter jets and air defence systems. Furthermore, said Macron, a frigate was scheduled to arrive off Cyprus later that evening, which it did.

The President vowed to ‘continue this effort as long as it is needed’, because France’s ‘credibility’ is on the line. He added: ‘Cyprus, an EU member state, a country with which we have signed a strategic partnership… requires our support.’

Britain is sending a destroyer to Cyprus, HMS Dragon, but it won’t be ready to sail until next week as it has recently come out of maintenance.

Not long after Macron addressed the nation on Tuesday evening, the first flights organised by his government arrived in Paris from the Middle East. On board were French nationals who had been stranded in the region since the conflict began. There have been many more arrivals since.

Britain had hoped to evacuate the first of its nationals from the Middle East on Wednesday night. Unfortunately the aircraft, charted by Starmer’s government, failed to depart from Oman. A Foreign Office spokesman blamed ‘technical issues’. One of the passengers described the aborted airlift as a ‘shitshow’.

Macron, to use military parlance, ‘is having a good war’. On Monday he visited the Ile Longue naval base in Brittany, which is home to France’s four nuclear submarines. In an address to personnel, Macron announced the expansion of the country’s nuclear arsenal from its existing total of 290 (Britain has an estimated 225 nuclear warheads). ‘To be free, we have to be feared,’ proclaimed the president.

Last year, Trump mocked Macron. He appears to have changed his tune

Macron is frequently accused of having few if any convictions. He has one, which has been a constant since he was elected president in 2017: namely that Europe must stand militarily on its own two feet. Not long after he came to office, Macron gave a speech at the Sorbonne in which he declared: ‘Our aim needs to be ensuring Europe’s autonomous operating capabilities, in complement to Nato.’

Naturally, he wants France – the only nuclear-power in the EU – to be running the show. He has made a good case this week, acting with firmness and alacrity and even impressing Trump.

Last year, Trump mocked Macron for his foreign policy, saying he ‘always gets it wrong’. He appears to have changed his tune this week. Marine Le Pen has also endorsed Macron’s position, describing his television address as ‘both brief and factual,’ adding: ‘He expressed the entirely legitimate defence of French interests, in particular the protection of our compatriots and our military bases.’

Macron is no Charles de Gaulle, but he respects his military and recognises its importance. The same can’t be said of Starmer. International law will always be his obsession.