The German Chancellor is still keeping the long-range missiles promised during the election campaign on the back burner. Meanwhile, the UK and France are sharing data with Kyiv to produce the Storm Shadow-Scalp missiles in Ukraine: Berlin is providing funding and co-producing them, but continues to drag its feet over the delivery of the Taurus missiles

The Chancellor said that German cities had become ugly because of immigration; he claimed that Iran had humiliated Donald Trump; and he returned from a climate summit in Belém, Brazil, remarking: “But who would want to stay there?”. A string of gaffes that is exacerbating his popularity crisis

Yesterday in Brühl, France and Germany pledged to revitalise cooperation between Berlin and Paris in the field of defence and to strengthen coordination in the area of nuclear deterrence, in an attempt to put the failure of the SCAF – the project to develop a sixth-generation multi-role fighter – behind them