Keir Starmer would not, I think, aspire to be Winston Churchill (during the general election, when I pressed him to pick one hero from history, he reluctantly alighted on Nelson Mandela).
And on the evidence of conversations with his team, I didn’t detect sadness that Donald Trump has turned on him by denigrating him as no reincarnation of Britain’s celebrated war-time leader.
Party politics explains that. The left of the Labour Party hated the way they saw Starmer fawning to the American president for more than a year. And what looked to them like appeasement helped the Green Party under Polanski win votes in the Gorton and Denton by-election and support more broadly.
So maybe Starmer’s refusal, initially, to allow Trumpt to use British bases including Diego Garcia for its war against Iran - which is what sparked Trump’s fury - will temper the Green surge.
Maybe.
But economics and politics are at odds here. And the economics may yet rebound on Starmer.
Because a vindictive Trump may punish Starmer by shredding the preferential tariffs, for car manufacturers and other exporters, that the prime minister secured as a result of wooing Trump.
And that would be both costly for the UK and humiliating for Starmer.
That said, the evidence of opinion polls is that a majority of British people do not want the UK to go to war against Iran, and they are not Trump fans.
So again the rift may not be politically costly to the PM.
But there is another but. Namely that we are now allowing the US to use our air bases. And most people won’t understand the PM’s logic in saying no to US fighter jets a few days ago and yes today.
The logic, for Starmer, is that his attorney general Richard Hermer told him it was unlawful for America to use our bases when America was the aggressor and before Tehran had retaliated but it became lawful when Tehran started dropping bombs on our Gulf and Arab allies.
Voters may well accept that is international law. And they may also say that if so the law is an ass.
Some of them may also say that the PM made a mistake in alienating the most powerful leader in the world, at a time of international crisis, when there was always a strong probability that Iran would lash out at the UK and allies, such that Starmer would have to capitulate and permit the American military to deploy on UK property.
As a number of senior military and intelligence people have said to me, though using slightly different words, if in this case international law was an ass, maybe the PM was too, for putting that law above realpolitik.