Southampton’s relegation is a disaster that offers a stark warning

A couple of hours after Southampton’s fate was sealed, a manager talked about having the worst season in history. It wasn’t Ivan Juric, either, but Ruben Amorim, with his gift for smiling exaggeration. Although, earlier in the week, candid Croatian Juric had said: “I don’t want it to be that we are the worst team in the history of Premier League.”

If everyone needs an ambition, it is a particularly undignified one. Relegated at record pace, mathematically gone with seven games to go, the drama in Southampton’s season rests on their attempts to equal or better Derby’s historic low of 11 points. It all seems to depend on a trip to Ruud van Nistelrooy’s Leicester. They will go there without Juric, sacked for either hopeless results or an honest appraisal of their demise.

If demotion was sealed by defeat to Tottenham on Sunday, it merely confirmed the inevitable. Perhaps, given the struggles of promoted teams, Southampton were down when they beat Leeds in last season’s play-off final. They almost certainly were after their first nine games produced a lone point. The symbolic moment of their season came at the start: facing Newcastle’s 10 men, dominating possession, goalkeeper Alex McCarthy, ordered to do something he cannot, passed to Alexander Isak and Joelinton scored.

Outside Hampshire, Southampton’s season may be remembered for the failure of an idea, the obvious outcome when misguided idealism collided with brutal reality. When it mattered, before they were cast adrift, before Juric discovered they were beyond rescuing, they were like Vincent Kompany’s Burnley in overdrive.

In 16 games before Russell Martin was sacked, Southampton made 11 errors that directly led to goals (and others that did not). Jurgen Klopp once called gegenpressing the best playmaker: opponents instead realised Southampton could create chances for them. The Premier League is hard enough for the weaker sides without donating goal after goal.

Before promotion, Martin felt his management would be more suited to the Premier League, given fewer games and more time on the training ground. He later concluded his players were not good enough for his style of football. Many another had already worked that out, some with the sense the manager was not either.

With his stubbornness backfiring, Martin became an inadvertent advertisement for pragmatism: idealism without sufficient competence brought a fiasco. Southampton should have either sacked Martin in the glow of promotion, showing the realism to look for someone better equipped for the task and allowing him to go with plenty of sympathy and his reputation at its highest, or forced him to remain in charge all season. Promotion was a fine achievement, the £100m or so from television revenue was invaluable, but he has been the architect of an atrocious campaign.

When Martin was dismissed, it was with five points from 16 games, the direction of travel clear. If Juric’s return of four from 14 was still worse, if he was also in the grip of delusion, he suffered from joining without realising the situation was irretrievable.

Not since Edward Smith boarded the Titanic in 1912 has anyone taken charge of as much of a sinking ship in Southampton; Juric did not notice the size of the holes until it was too late. Having previously accepted the Roma job after crowd favourite Daniele de Rossi was suddenly fired, the Croatian needs to show the capacity to dodge hospital passes in future.

Juric made some odd decisions – such as picking midfielder Joe Aribo in defence – but he constructed fine gameplans at Old Trafford and Anfield. Southampton led at both, albeit in vain; it was part of a pattern where they lost 25 points from winning positions, pointing again to a lack of pragmatism, nerve, defensive solidity and strength in depth. Juric’s departure, even before the season finished, merely brought things forward. He was collateral damage from a calamitous campaign, having suffered so many defeats he could not start next season with a clean slate with either players or fans.

Juric’s bluntness may have ushered him to the exit, but Southampton ought to learn a lesson or two from a direct talker. On Sunday, Juric spoke of “mistakes the club has made in the last three or four years”. Or, to put it another way, under Sport Republic’s ownership, this is their second ignominious, expensive relegation. In one respect, the first was the worst – spending £160m with an established Premier League club.

“Recruitment is everything in football,” said Juric. Southampton spent £100m this season for 10 points. Their squad was unbalanced, with far too many centre-backs, lacking physicality in some areas, particularly midfield, and lacking quality in others. Ben Brereton Diaz will go down as a bad buy, Maxwel Cornet a weird loan. They should not have signed Ryan Fraser, just as Martin should not have kept Jack Stephens as captain.

Although the league table suggests otherwise, they might actually have half of a good team. Now, they will lose them. The luckless Aaron Ramsdale’s best saves came in losses, and he needs a safe haven in mid-table to spare him another relegation. Tyler Dibling will not bring them the £100m they are allegedly asking for, but he has talent. The gifted Matheus Fernandes has not really settled in the area, Kyle Walker-Peters is out of contract and Southampton are still lumbered with some of the 2022-23 signings – Kamaldeen Sulemana, for one, seems sure to eye the exit.

Juric’s valedictory words included the warning that there are “huge problems in lots of situations”. But there could also be the conditions to win games next season. In the loaned-out Adam Armstrong and Cameron Archer, they have the genre of player too good for the Championship and not good enough for the Premier League. Maybe promotion specialist Taylor Harwood-Bellis will be ignored by Premier League clubs. Perhaps Flynn Downes will be at a level when he can again excel.

All of which would require the right manager. If Sheffield Wednesday make the former Southampton coach Danny Rohl available, he might be ideal. For now, Saints have a second interim spell under Simon Rusk. The low-profile caretaker secured a 0-0 draw at Fulham in December, simply because no one gave a silly goal away, and that offered a vision of a sliding-doors scenario.

A less self-destructive brand of football could have been more productive. Southampton would probably have always gone down, but not this embarrassingly. Amid relegation and recrimination, the Saints ought to rue the way this has felt so needless, so predictable, the disaster everyone else foresaw.

The month you are born influences how your body stores fat

People conceived during colder months may end up with a lower body mass index and less fat around internal organs than those conceived in warmer seasons, a new study has found.

The research, published this week in the journal Nature Metabolism, highlights the potential role weather conditions play in influencing a person’s physiology over the course of their life.

Obesity is a leading risk factor for death today, with experts warning last year that over a billion people worldwide live with very high levels of body fat.

Although exercise and diet are key factors influencing body fat content, exposure to cold and warmth appear to play a major part as well.

A special type of fat called brown adipose tissue generates heat to help the body maintain its core temperature, especially in cold environments and in newborns.

White adipose tissue, in contrast, is the body’s primary store of energy and also serves as a hormone-secreting organ.

When temperatures drop, the body naturally stores less fat in the form of white adipose tissue than it does under hotter conditions.

The factors influencing brown adipose tissue activity are poorly understood, however, the researchers behind the study, including Takeshi Yoneshiro from Japan’s Tohoku University, say.

The research analyses brown adipose tissue density, activity and heat generation in 683 healthy men and women whose parents were exposed to cold or warm temperatures during conception and birth.

Participants, aged between three and 78, who were conceived during the cold season ended up with higher brown adipose tissue activity, linked to higher body energy expenditure, more heat generation, lower internal fat accumulation, and lower BMI into adulthood.

“Here we report that individuals whose mothers conceived during cold seasons exhibit higher brown adipose tissue activity, adaptive thermogenesis, increased daily total energy expenditure and lower body mass index and visceral fat accumulation,” researchers say.

Brown adipose tissue activity, the study concludes, is mainly influenced by a large variation in daily and lower ambient temperatures pre-conception. “Lower outdoor temperatures and greater fluctuations in daily temperatures during the fertilisation period are key determinants of brown adipose tissue activity,” it states.

The researchers call for further studies, including with a more diverse population set, to find out the underlying mechanisms behind this link.

They hope to determine how diet and other environmental factors affect this link.

Plastic surgeon found guilty of trying to kill colleague

A plastic surgeon has been found guilty of attempting to murder a fellow doctor whom he wanted “out of the way”, by breaking into his home, dousing the ground floor in petrol and then stabbing his victim.

Jurors deliberated for more than 12 hours at Leicester Crown Court, sitting in Loughborough, before finding Peter Brooks, 61, guilty of knifing Graeme Perks and dousing the ground floor of his house with petrol with intent to set it on fire.

It can now be reported that Brooks was “voluntarily absent” from his month-long trial because he was on hunger strike and said he would “rather be dead than incarcerated”.

He also sacked his lawyers before the trial and was unrepresented in the case.

The consultant, specialising in burns and plastics, was convicted on Monday of two counts of attempted murder – one for the intended use of fire and the other for the stabbing – attempted arson with intent to endanger life, and possession of a knife in a public place.

The court heard he cycled through snowy conditions to Mr Perks’ home in Halam, near Southwell, Nottinghamshire, in the early hours of 14 January 2021, during a Covid lockdown, wearing camouflage gear and armed with a crowbar, petrol, matches and a knife.

The jury was told that Mr Perks, a consultant plastic surgeon, provided evidence in disciplinary proceedings against Brooks, who faced potentially losing his job with Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust.

When opening the prosecution’s case, Tracy Ayling KC had told the jury it was “clear that the defendant hated Graeme Perks” and wanted him “out of the way”.

Mr Perks, who was 65 at the time, had retired the month before the attack but suffered “extremely life-threatening” injuries to his liver, intestines and pancreas, and was given a 95 per cent chance of death, the court was told.

The victim woke up when Brooks smashed through his conservatory, and went downstairs where his feet “felt a bit damp” from the petrol before he felt a “blow to his body”, the jury heard.

The court was told Brooks had also thrown petrol up the stair walls while Mr Perks’ wife and youngest son were sleeping upstairs.

The defendant was found asleep on a garden bench later that morning when he was taken to hospital for injuries to his hand, and was arrested.

His hunger strike could not be reported throughout the trial and the jury were told not to speculate about his absence from the dock.

He appeared in court via video-link for the first time in the trial from HMP Norwich on April 1, in the absence of the jury, and told Mr Justice Pepperall he wanted to defend himself, that he did not have “sufficient time to prepare” for the trial, and wanted a four-week adjournment.

Brooks, who could be seen lying on the floor during his court appearance because sitting in his wheelchair made him “feel unwell”, said: “I would rather be dead than in prison so I continued with my hunger strike. I have had enough of being in prison.

“I don’t particularly want to die but if my choice is between incarceration and death, I would rather be dead than incarcerated.”

Brooks, formerly of Landseer Road, Southwell, said his autism may have made it more likely that he went on hunger strike and added that someone in hospital said he “may be suffering from anorexia”.

Ms Ayling responded to Brooks’ submissions and said he was “manipulating the court process”, and that the court had “bent over backwards” to maintain his rights in the trial.

The judge agreed to adjourn the trial for 48 hours for Brooks to give evidence, but he became upset and said he was “not well enough” to do so at short notice.

The court heard he “asked to be taken back to his cell” and refused to participate further in proceedings.

Mr Justice Pepperall ruled that on “no fewer than eight occasions” since 2021 Brooks had “used hunger strikes or the threat of some other self-harm to achieve some advantage”.

Brooks’ convictions follow a four-year series of legal hearings, including a mistrial and seven other aborted trial dates.

He put forward numerous possible defences, including self-defence and lack of intent, but never gave evidence directly to a jury.

His first trial, in July 2022, had to be adjourned because he was suffering from a medical complication of radiotherapy, which required surgery.

The judge thanked jurors for their service in “particularly unusual circumstances” and excused them from jury service for five years.

Manjeet Shehmar, Medical Director at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, said: “We have been following the case of Mr Brooks closely and respect the decision made in court today.

“We would like to offer our sympathies to those who were affected by Mr Brooks’ actions, including Mr Perks and his family, and other colleagues from within the Trust.”

Sacrifice altar hidden in jungle reveals crossover of ancient cultures

A Teotihuacan altar has been unearthed in Tikal National Park in Guatemala, the centre of Mayan civilisation, shedding new light on the interactions between the two ancient cultures.

The discovery, announced on Monday by Guatemala’s Culture and Sports Ministry, was made within the ancient city of Tikal – an enormous city-state which battled for centuries with the Kaanul dynasty for dominance of the Maya world.

Far to the north in Mexico, just outside present-day Mexico City, Teotihuacan – “the city of the gods” or “the place where men become gods” – is best known for its twin Temples of the Sun and Moon. It was actually a large city that housed over 100,000 inhabitants and covered around eight square miles (20 square kilometres).

The still mysterious city was one of the largest in the world at its peak between 100 B.C. and A.D. 750. However, it was abandoned before the rise of the Aztecs in the 14th century.

Lorena Paiz, the archaeologist who led the discovery, said that the Teotihuacan altar was believed to have been used for sacrifices, “especially of children.”

It took archaeologists one and a half years to uncover the altar in a dwelling and analyse it before the announcement.

“The remains of three children not older than four years were found on three sides of the altar,” Paiz said.

“The Teotihuacan were traders who traveled all over the country (Guatemala),” Paiz said. “The Teotihuacan residential complexes were houses with rooms and in the centre altars; that’s what the residence that was found is like, with an altar with the figure representing the Storm Goddess.”

Edwin Román, who leads the South Tikal Archaeological Project within the park, said the discovery shows the sociopolitical and cultural interaction between the Maya of Tikal and Teotihuacan’s elite between 300 and 500 A.D.

Román said the discovery also reinforces the idea that Tikal was a cosmopolitan centre at that time, a place where people visited from other cultures, affirming its importance as a centre of cultural convergence.

María Belén Méndez, an archaeologist who was not involved with the project, said the discovery confirms “that there has been an interconnection between both cultures and what their relationships with their gods and celestial bodies was like.”

“We see how the issue of sacrifice exists in both cultures. It was a practice; it’s not that they were violent, it was their way of connecting with the celestial bodies,” she said.

The altar is just over a yard (1m) wide from east to west and nearly 2 yards (2m) from north to south. It is about a yard (1m) tall and covered with limestone.

The dwelling where it was found had anthropomorphic figures with tassels in red tones, a detail from the Teotihuacan culture, according to the ministry’s statement.

Tikal National Park is about 325 miles (525 kilometres) north of Guatemala City, the site is guarded and there are no plans to open it to the public.

The global event bringing fresh energy to planet-positive solutions

As we navigate significant environmental and social challenges, the return of ChangeNOW, the world’s biggest expo of solutions for the planet, is much needed to reinvigorate climate action. The 2025 edition, which will take place from April 24th to 26th, will host 140 countries, 40,000 attendees, 10,000 companies and 1,200 investors.

Visionary leaders, established businesses and start-ups alike will gather to showcase over 1,000 sustainable solutions and groundbreaking innovations in key sectors such as clean energy, biodiversity, sustainable cities and the circular economy.

The ChangeNOW 2025 summit will be held at the iconic Grand Palais in Paris, a nod to the 10th anniversary of the Paris Agreement. Reuniting for the occasion will be guest speakers Mary Robinson, the former (and first female) president of Ireland, Laurent Fabius, former French prime minister, Patricia Espinosa, former UN climate chief and diplomat and Diána Ürge-Vorsatz, leading climate scientist and professor – all of whom were in the French capital a decade earlier to help shape the Paris Agreement at COP21.

There may have been obvious setbacks to environmental policy around the world of late, the United States’ recent withdrawal from the Paris Agreement being a notable one. However ChangeNOW 2025 intends to reaffirm the spirit of Paris, while serving as a catalyst for progress ahead of COP30 and the United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC). “Ten years after COP21, ChangeNOW is where leaders and changemakers converge to accelerate the ecological and social transition,” states Santiago Lefebvre, founder and president of ChangeNOW. “Thousands of solutions will be showcased demonstrating that meaningful progress is within reach.”

His message of positive climate action will be supported by a multitude of world famous faces who will be in attendance at the auspicious event. Natalie Portman, Academy award-winning actress, director, author, activist, and producer; Captain Paul Watson, Founder of Sea Shepherd and Ocean Conservationist; Hannah Jones, CEO of The Earthshot Prize and Olympic champion boxer and gender equality advocate Imane Khelif are just a few of the names set to appear at ChangeNOW 2025.

With over 500 speakers and 250 conference sessions exploring climate action, biodiversity protection, resource management, and social inclusion, ChangeNOW 2025 will also hear the insights of acclaimed corporate leaders from Accor, Bouygues, Henkel, Lidl, Nexans, and Saint-Gobain, who will explain how businesses can be the ones to drive real change.

And the event will not only be an opportunity for global policymakers to discuss next steps in climate action, it will also be a platform for nations to showcase local innovations through their country pavilions. Expect impactful solutions from countries including South Africa, The Netherlands, and Ukraine – demonstrating international collaboration on the topic of climate.

In addition to the packed program of speakers, workshops, exhibits and networking opportunities, ChangeNOW 2025 will host the Impact Job Fair on Saturday, 26 April, with over 150 recruiters and training organisations offering in excess of 600 roles. Dedicated to the public and young professionals, the interactive workshops, educational activities, and career opportunities in sustainable sectors on offer aim to inspire the next generation of changemakers.

The summit will also present the annual Women for Change conference and the accompanying portrait exhibition, which showcases 25 women who are set to have a significant positive impact on their communities, countries or on a global scale over the next 10 years. Created in 2021, the Women for Change initiative aims to platform and provide opportunities for women who are leading change around the world but require further recognition or investment to continue their work. The annual flagship event, which takes place on the afternoon of April 24th, offers women the chance to discuss new ideas, network with likeminded people, and also acquire funding to help solidify their leadership, and amplify their impact.

Step outside the Grand Palais and take a few steps to the Port des Champs Elysées, on the bank of the Seine, where the The Water Odyssey village awaits. One of the event’s standout features, the immersive 1,000 m² exhibition is open to the public and highlights solutions to maritime and river sustainability challenges – offering a mix of conferences, interactive displays, and sensory experiences to engage all ages.

For three days, ChangeNOW will transform Paris into the global capital of impact, bringing together policymakers, entrepreneurs, investors, and the public in the pursuit of sustainable progress.

Book your ChangeNOW 2025 ticket here

Trump has made China appear a beacon of free trade

The Chinese Communist Party, apostle of free trade. In a strange new world, that was the strangest thing, as shares crashed in reaction to President Donald Trump’s opening salvo of tariffs in a global trade war.

“The market has spoken,” said the foreign ministry spokesperson, Guo Jiakun, writing in English on Facebook – which is, by the way, banned in China. No double standards there, then. Beijing can always keep a straight face when it matters.

Politically, the Chinese government can scarcely believe its luck. It has stepped forward as a voice of reason and stability in a chorus of discord to promote the false narrative that it has been a model of good behaviour since it joined the World Trade Organisation (WTO) on 11 December 2001, a date that seems destined to live in the textbooks as the peak of globalisation.

The Trump tariffs “are a typical act of unilateral bullying”, complained a spokesperson for China’s Commerce Ministry.

“This approach disregards the balance of interests achieved through years of multilateral trade negotiations and ignores the fact that the US has long gained substantial profits from international trade,” the spokesperson added.

The official news agency, Xinhua, said the tariffs were “a weapon to suppress China’s economy and trade” and told the United States to stop undermining “the legitimate development rights of the Chinese people”.

It would be a mistake to write off Chinese rhetoric. The regime of Xi Jinping is serious and its actions speak louder than words.

Clue: China has listed “legitimate development rights” as one of its “red lines” in dealing with the US. The term is code for the export-led economic model which has propelled the country to the rank of second largest economy on earth since it joined the WTO.

Understand that and you understand that for China this is existential. There could be no greater contrast to the whirlwind in Washington than the disciplined, efficiently executed responses announced by Beijing in nine statements outlining reprisals that went beyond mere numbers.

Xi himself did not deign to speak publicly, let alone do anything as vulgar as posting on social media in capital letters. The Chinese public would have thought it beneath his dignity.

Untroubled by such niceties, Trump swiftly posted to his followers online that “CHINA PLAYED IT WRONG, THEY PANICKED.”

With all due respect to the American president, that is exactly what they did not do. The Xi hit list is ominous because it is well-planned and researched. The “Red Emperor” rules a mandarin class of sophisticated operators who do nothing else but study China’s opponents using every intelligence tool at their disposal.

The easy part for China was to impose reciprocal 34 per cent tariffs on all American imports from 10 April. It also suspended six American firms from exporting to China, launched anti-dumping actions in the medical sector and targeted the US giant DuPont with a probe into potential monopoly practices.

The hard part showed just how thoroughly the Chinese had done their work. No penguin islands or weird mathematics here. They banned the export of “dual use” items, which could have military or civilian applications, to 16 US firms, all in the technology sector.

Their key move was to put export controls on seven rare earth elements “to safeguard national security”. It’s on the public record that some of these are vital to US weapons systems.

The list of rare earths included terbium, which is used to enhance the properties of specialised magnets used in guidance systems, satellites and radar. The magnets are integral to the state-of-the-art F-35 fighter, Predator drones, cruise missiles and nuclear submarines.

Then there’s dysprosium, a rare-earth element of which China controls nearly all the world’s supply. It is used to make high-grade magnets that work in super-heated conditions and is found in the newest semiconductors. Other rare earths on the list are vital to jet engine turbine blades. All will now require special export licences.

China and America are thus in a new kind of war over technology and artificial intelligence. Both Joe Biden and Trump tried to choke the supply of advanced semiconductors to Chinese manufacturers, while China is seeking to choke the supply of raw materials to America’s tech champions.

It’s not hard to see how dangerous this could get. The founder of free-trading modern Singapore, the late Lee Kuan Yew, once told me in an interview that “World War Two was caused because of empires and protectionism”.

He recalled that in the 1940s an oil embargo on Imperial Japan pushed its military leaders into war and he warned that if the West tried to isolate China economically “that is bound to lead to conflict”.

Lee was talking in the 1990s, when China stood on the threshold of globalisation. It joined the WTO only after hard-fought talks. But Charlene Barshevsky, who sealed the deal for the United States, later lamented that the Americans failed to use the WTO to punish Beijing when it broke the rules.

That created the belief that appeasement and elite inertia condemned the American working class to decline, the foundation story of Trump’s movement to Make America Great Again. So it is some irony that the Chinese have just filed a formal complaint about Trump’s tariffs – with the World Trade Organisation.

Michael Sheridan, longtime foreign correspondent and diplomatic editor of The Independent, is the author of The Red Emperor published by Headline Press at £25

The US president must stop his ‘Trump Slump’ becoming a global one

Most shocks in capital markets are, by definition, unexpected. They sometimes derive purely from some almost random-seeming shift in market sentiment, albeit with more deep-set fundamental factors at work. The Great Crash of 1929 and the stock market crash of October 1987 – Black Monday – fall neatly into that category.

Others are more clearly understood in real time, but still a shock: the global financial crisis of 2008 is comprehensible from a distance, albeit famously seen as a “black swan” event. Still others are more purely external – Arab nations imposing an oil curfew after the Yom Kippur war in 1973; or whatever bat, pangolin or Chinese lab assistant was responsible for the coronavirus getting loose.

The Trump tariff crash of 2025 is an altogether unusual affair – one of the few such catastrophes to befall the savings and livelihoods of millions of people caused by the stubbornness of one man.

Because it is Donald Trump – and he alone – who is responsible not only for the substance of his reckless shutdown of US trade with the rest of the world, but the deeply flawed design of the tariff schedules, the practically unprecedented suddenness of their introduction, and the incomprehensible rationale for the policy. Certainly, Mr Trump made no secret of his love for – “the most beautiful word” – tariffs.

But the scale and incompetence that has been attached to his attack on trade has stunned and appalled the world. Worse even than that, it has left people confused.

At one point over the weekend, serious analysts were suggesting that Mr Trump actually intended for the markets to crash. In most cases, this was not a product of the over-conspiratorial minds of the Trump cultists, but because the president himself had reposted a story on social media suggesting that he was “Purposely CRASHING The Market”. A White House spokesperson had to state that the president did not, in fact, deliberately wipe some $8 trillion off the world’s stock markets – another unwelcome precedent set by this president.

The question then arises: “What does Mr Trump think he is doing?” The answer is that no one knows, not even the president.

Some, including the president himself in his unorthodox Rose Garden presentation and his secretary for commerce, Howard Lutnick, suggest that it is all about reindustrialising the United States and generating “trillions” of long-term tax revenues. In his address to workers at Jaguar Land Rover on Monday, Sir Keir Starmer admitted that tariffs are “a huge challenge for our future, and the global economic consequences could be profound”.

Less than comfortingly, Mr Trump compares what he’s putting the previously healthy American economy through to a patient undergoing an operation. Others, occasionally also including the president himself, suggest it is merely another of his brilliant negotiating tactics, and point excitedly to the response of nations such as Vietnam, Israel and Argentina offering zero-tariff deals with America – but which would therefore yield zero returns for the proposed new US “External Revenue Service”.

Put simply, it is a matter of “Tariffs bad – uncertainty even worse”. Businesses and households cannot plan in such an environment, and that means that investment will be frozen for weeks, if not months, and a recession becomes ever more likely.

That is one imminent danger. Another is the way that the market contagion has spread from industrial and resources stocks to the banks, with the obvious worry that the trade recession will soon be joined by its evil twin, a credit crunch. As confidence drains from the world economy, companies are nervous about investing, banks are reluctant to lend, and savers will turn to safer havens than equities. Historically, such security was offered by the United States dollar; now, perhaps, not so much.

One of the great ironies in Mr Trump’s plan to boost the American economy is that, within a fairly short time, he will have plunged it into such a slump that he will need to take emergency measures to rescue it – tax cuts, and increasing the US budget deficit to pay for it. The Federal Reserve may find it has no alternative but to cut interest rates – usually a welcome move, but in this case merely proof of the disaster the Trump administration is inflicting on its people.

The net result may be stagflation: above-target increases while economic activity stagnates. It is analogous to what a combination of the Brexit shock and the reckless Truss experiment that crashed the UK economy in 2022 would do. It is that bad.

What can the authorities, including in the United States, do to prevent a slump? Unlike in 2008 and 2020, for example, in most Western economies, there is far less scope for borrowing at sustainable interest rates to support the economy.

In 2008, when Gordon Brown was prime minister and had to nationalise most of the British banking sector, the UK national debt-to-GDP ratio stood at about 36 per cent. By the time Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak were faced with closing down the economy in 2020, it was 85 per cent. It now stands at 95 per cent, and trending higher.

If the present chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has barely enough fiscal headroom to keep to her fiscal rules, she will have to find some convincing explanations about the much more onerous costs of nursing Britain through what we may soon be calling “the Trump Slump”. That, of course, is not even accounting for the real cost of deterring Vladimir Putin and helping to defend Europe (that being another direct consequence of Mr Trump’s election).

Much the best move, and one still hoped for, is that Mr Trump accepts the manifold and genuine offers of constructive negotiations he’s had from world leaders, declares an early “victory” for his tactics, and announces a 90-day moratorium during which new, freer trade deals can be reached across the world.

It would be good news for all. The markets would calm, American voters would no longer fear opening their pension fund statements, and Mr Trump might turn his mess into a miracle of trade liberalisation.

The dangers if President Trump does press on with his mercantilist “medicine” for America are too gruesome to contemplate. At times such as this, what else is there other than optimism?