THESE aren’t the changes Bob Dylan was calling for. His was a “get out of the way” message from a generation eager for more optimistic, transformative and inclusive change. There’s no such optimism to be found in today’s upheavals. Meanness and madness occupy the centre stage of global politics.

The bully-boy tactics of Donald Trump, JD Vance and Elon Musk are creating a trail of destruction and insecurity that is rapidly trashing “the old world order.” Many would argue it needed trashing, but not to make way for something so much worse. This, though, is the world we are faced with and these are the politics that urgently need a-changin’.

In doing so, if there is one core message to be understood, particularly by Britain’s Labour government, it is this: the answer to a playground bully is never to suck up to them, never to go looking for smaller kids to pick on.