THERE’S a chill that comes from imagining Britain’s military situation room when a tense diplomatic stand-off is developing and Boris Johnson bumbles onto the premises. “Um, the Black Sea; is that um, one of ours?”

The fear that must grip service personnel when a well-armed and belligerent foe is telling you to scram with extreme prejudice must only have been matched by senior admiralty figures this week when the Prime Minister popped in to see what all the fuss was about. Mr Johnson has form when it comes to chucking accelerant onto geopolitical fires.

Perhaps they recalled his line about “Papua New Guinea-style orgies of cannibalism and chief-killing” in a column he wrote for The Telegraph in 2006. Maybe it was a more recent incident that came to mind when Mr Johnson, having shown his detailed grasp of local customs in the southwestern Pacific, was now raised to Foreign Secretary.

It was in this office that he attempted to assist in the case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian woman being detained in Iran. She’d been “simply teaching people journalism,” said Mr Johnson, obviously unaware how suspicious Tehran has always been about the BBC’s presence in the region.

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Perhaps they were nervously trying to recall any classic verse disobliging of Russia that Johnson might have felt moved to recite in the thrill of the moment, just as he did in 2017 when he quoted Rudyard Kipling at a holy site in Myanmar.

Thankfully, a responsible adult was on hand to step in before Mr Johnson reached the line about a “Bloomin’ idol made o’ mud, wot they called the Great Gawd Budd”. It adds to the gaiety of the nation having a premier who can recite the literature of empire … just maybe not when the Russians are lobbing bombs at one of your destroyers.

We’ll all reach our own conclusions, of course, on why a British warship was messing about on a disputed corridor of water that Russia, the dominant force in this region, claims to own. General Lord Dannatt, former chief of the General Staff, felt that the Russians were due a jolly good thrashing. In a letter to The Times this week, his Lordship wrote: “Russia wishes to continue to play hard ball over Ukraine, so the West will continue to look Putin firmly in the eye. We will not blink.”

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It’s reassuring to know, isn’t it, that Britain’s strategic military wisdom hasn’t changed much in the 167 years since one of our aristocratic top brass last got a bit carried away in the Crimea. This was when Lord Cardigan led the Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava. In that encounter the stalwart Russians remained admirably unfazed by the British Army’s brave but hopelessly optimistic 1-1-8 formation and proceeded to annihilate them.

Sir Tony Brenton, former British Ambassador to Moscow took a wiser and more informed view of the Black Sea incident. In a letter that appeared next to the irascible Lord Dannatt’s, Sir Tony wrote: “Whitehall knew very well the intensity of the response the Royal Navy’s incursion would provoke and deliberately went ahead with it. The exercise was dangerous …”

So what was it all about, really? Having spent the last five years chastising our European partners and channelling British isolationism and exceptionalism the British Government can’t suddenly be coming over all solicitous about upholding the honour of our G7 and EU ‘friends’.

And not even someone as reckless as Mr Johnson would stage a square-go with the Kremlin to deflect attention from the extra-marital concupiscence of his Health Secretary. And in any case, as Sir Tony later pointed out, it was incoherent with the approach of our western partners.

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In the immediate aftermath of Brexit I wasn’t alone in predicting that the Johnson axis, having shamelessly proclaimed Agincourt, Waterloo and Trafalgar, would soon be scrabbling around for a convenient military confrontation to sanctify the deal while their supporters were still in a state of triumphalist exultation. I just didn’t imagine it would happen as quickly as this.

Perhaps it was felt that the pandemic had punctured the Brexit euphoria and so the need to shake our fist at someone was moved up the timeline. But the Russians? I mean could we not just have settled for sending a gunboat into the Channel and shouting at France a bit?

The UK’s Black Sea adventure also seems to have unfolded as part of a more elaborate and choreographed exercise in conveying a sense of British pre-eminence. This began with the announcement that we’re all being urged to come together as a unified nation and celebrate One Britain One Nation day. This came with some handy hints like hanging The Queen in our homes. Though, if Her Majesty is on board with this suggestion, she might want to ask that recalcitrant wee royal roaster, Harry, what he’s got against Dumbarton, after he and Meghan rejected the title of Earl of Dumbarton for their son Archie.

Johnson and his third-rate cabinet of Brexiteers are already dealing with the consequences of what it means to leave Europe in such a chaotic fashion. The EU, not unreasonably, are asking just what it was about the Irish backstop that Britain didn’t understand. The farmers, the fishing industry, the road hauliers and the Ulster Unionists are now realising they were all hoodwinked into swallowing the Taking Back Control fantasy. These four sectors did much of the heavy-lifting for a Leave vote.

And so, the British ruling classes are now simply falling back on some old and trusted methods of ensuring that popular discontent doesn’t become a revolt: organise some military belligerence and play the poor old Queen. The problem with this strategy is that the world, including our traditional international rivals, knows that Britain – isolated and vulnerable – is cutting an increasingly ridiculed and reviled figure on the global stage.

Before the end of the year, a British aircraft carrier strike group will reach disputed waters in the South China Sea where indications are that it wants to perform a freelance mouse-roar similar to this week’s in the Black Sea. I wonder if Boris Johnson knows this quote: “When a King makes a mistake, all the people suffer.” It’s a Chinese proverb.

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