Editorial: The DUP leader Gavin Robinson picks the right time to talk of the benefits of being in the UK

​This has been a difficult week for Britain, Ireland and the world. On Friday evening eight days ago, as last Saturday’s paper was going to publication, we were getting the first reports of the extraordinary spat in the White House between Donald Trump and President Zelensky of Ukraine.

It was an incident that looked no less ugly the next day, when there was time to watch the entire 50-minute encounter and the humiliation of the heroic leader of a country that was invaded by Russia. Trump apologists on both sides of the Atlantic scrambled to explain what happened, and to insist that it was not a victory for that thuggish dictator President Putin of Russia, but it was.

Then as the week progressed, America began to try to hobble Ukraine in its defence. This is an atrocious, and almost unbelievable situation. It is one thing to say, as President Trump does, that Europe must pay more for defence (as it should). It is quite another to side with Moscow.

Then President Trump imposed tariffs on Canada, a close ally of the US, thus uniting all political parties north of that border against America, and on China and Mexico. As the week progressed, European leaders worked together on a plan to bolster defence and to see what could be salvaged on behalf of Ukraine. This was an uplifting sight, and a strange one for supporters of Brexit, many of whom would prefer the UK to be a close ally of the US than of the EU but who were appalled at the treatment of Ukraine.

Thus the DUP leader Gavin Robinson has chosen the right time to talk of the benefits of the UK, a nation of 70 million people, the fifth largest economy in the world, that can have good relations with both the EU and US but independent of both. Mr Robinson is also right to flag up the defence failures of an Ireland that freeloads of Britain for security, yet has the nerve to sue it over its handling of the legacy of terror.