Last month a California court ruled that “bumblebees are actually fish”, says Andy Kessler in The Wall Street Journal. The reason is benign – designating the insects as sea-life means they can be protected by existing laws – but it’s pretty silly. Rather like when the Environmental Protection Agency tried to claim jurisdiction over drainage ditches by defining them as “navigable waters”. Meanwhile we have oat milk and almond milk, “even though they obviously aren’t milk”, and the similarly oxymoronic “plant-based meat”. China and Venezuela sit on the UN Human Rights Council. Bit by bit, we’re being trained to believe that “anything can be anything”.

When it comes to helping Ukraine, “the might and commitment of the US are indispensable”, says Max Hastings in Bloomberg. The trouble is that plenty of Americans are already losing interest. They think their country is staking too much in Europe when China is the more dangerous adversary. And after two decades of US intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan, sceptics don’t want to see Washington commit to another “messy struggle in a faraway country that costs blood and treasure” for little glory.