A giant second and an enormous resolution, forward of an enormous assembly.
The federal government’s announcement that it should crank up defence spending and shrivel the worldwide assist finances quantities to an enormous shift in technique, posture and political positioning.
Check out the Labour Celebration’s election manifesto, written lower than a yr in the past, if you want proof of that.
On web page 125, it says: “Labour is dedicated to restoring improvement spending on the degree of 0.7 per cent of gross nationwide revenue as quickly as fiscal circumstances enable.”
The celebration is now committing to doing the exact reverse – reducing improvement spending by the identical quantity by which it had promised to lift it.
There’s nothing like an outspoken American president and an imminent go to to the White Home to sharpen the thoughts – and hey presto, alongside got here this announcement simply because the prime minister packs his shirts for his journey throughout the Atlantic.
Alongside got here the thumbs-up from the Trump administration not lengthy later.
However it is usually true that there was a rising recognition for a while and throughout a number of events that extra money needed to be spent on defence.
The prime minister has taken to recalling how the Berlin Wall coming down made him really feel. “It felt as if we have been putting off the shackles of historical past, a continent united by freedom and democracy,” as he places it – contrasting that with the truth of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
A wider critique alongside these traces has been crystallising for a while: the sense that the Nineties have been a vacation from historical past, as Jonathan Freedland known as it, and that the tip of the Chilly Warfare had created a peace dividend the place defence budgets might atrophy and the cash could possibly be spent on hospitals and faculties, for example.
As an alternative, not solely is there battle in Europe, there may be an occupant of the White Home with seemingly little regard for the American safety umbrella this continent has relied upon since World Warfare Two.
Little marvel, then, that we’ve seen a blitz of the jitters in European capitals as presidents and prime ministers attempt to work out what it could or could not imply.
The duty dealing with Starmer – the second strand of the European tag workforce of leaders to go to Washington, after President Emmanuel Macron on Monday – is to aim to mould President Donald Trump’s place.
Over the approaching weeks and months, can a deal be completed the place the battle stops, Ukraine doesn’t really feel defeated, Europe doesn’t really feel imperilled and transatlantic relations are as close to to traditional as potential?
It’s not going to be straightforward.
The prime minister’s journey to the White Home is however one constructing block in creating solutions to those questions.
After which, over the next weekend, Starmer will host a gathering of European leaders to mirror on the place the conversations thus far have taken us.
President Volodymyr Zelensky is anticipated in Washington quickly too.
The subsequent few weeks might show essential.
