King Cnut is misremembered as a deluded fool who tried to subdue the sea. In fact, he was a wise and pious man who wished to demonstrate to his subjects the limitations of regal power. ‘You and the land on which my throne is standing are subject to me,’ Cnut admonished the tide. ‘No one has ever defied my royal commands and gone unpunished.’ When the waters began splashing at his feet, the monarch turned to the crowd and proclaimed: ‘Let all the world know that the power of kings is a vain and trifling thing.’ There was, Cnut said, only one true sovereign: ‘That King whose commands heaven, earth and sea obey, according to eternal laws’.

Keir Starmer is no Cnut. In recognising a state of Palestine, he attempts not merely to halt the tide but to summon a new tide, one which flows counter to

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