Britain is great at muddling through. But imagine if its leaders knew where they were heading | Timothy Garton Ash

Starmer's successful reset' with Europe highlights an underlying incoherence. The only rational long-term strategy is to rejoin the EU, but our politics is far removed from that

Like a chronic ailment, strategic incoherence gnaws at everything Britain does in the world. Keir Starmer's real achievement in resetting relations with mainland Europe - witness the recent visits of the French president Emmanuel Macron and the German chancellor Friedrich Merz - does not obscure, and in a way even highlights, this deeper confusion.

After 1945, Winston Churchill envisioned Britain's global role at the intersection of three circles: the British Commonwealth and (then still) empire; the Europe whose postwar recovery and unification he strongly supported; and the United States. As Commonwealth countries have formed stronger ties elsewhere, the first circle is no longer of strategic significance. Having committed itself in the 1970s to the most developed political and economic form of the second circle, now the European Union, Britain has withdrawn from it. With the revolutionary nationalism of President Donald Trump, the third circle is also fading fast. So here's an 80-year countdown of Britain's strategic circles: three ... two ... one, going on none.

Timothy Garton Ash is a historian, political writer and Guardian columnist