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Two British Prime Ministers gave foreign policy speeches recently. Only one of them was any good. Unfortunately, it was not the speech given by the current Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer.

Starmer's address to the Lady Mayor of London's Banquet at the Guildhall on Monday was a patchwork quilt of small ideas, sown together, like a student essay, with a few "buts", "becauses" and "moreovers", to make it sound coherent. It was a dog's breakfast. Mutton dressed as lamb. A litany of false boasts, ambitious claims, non-sequiturs, and dodges around the hard questions.

No matter how many times Starmer inserted the word "so" into his speech, the speech lacked persuasive logic, or honesty about Britain's current status on the world stage.

It did correctly acknowledge that the UK has to try to navigate its way between today's three global giants - the US, the EU and China. But in all three cases, Starmer exaggerated how well we are doing, and underplayed the extent of the challenges.

Starting with the EU, Starmer made perhaps his frankest acknowledgement that Brexit had been a mistake. He said "how it was sold and delivered was wrong. Wild promises were made to the British people and not fulfilled. We are still dealing with the consequences today, in our economy, and in trust - in the degradation of political debate."

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But, he framed the argument as if it was still merely how Brexit was delivered which was the problem, rather than the very decision to leave the EU itself. He also shied away from even his more limited argument's logical conclusion, which is that the UK should try to renegotiate major parts of the Brexit deal, to get better terms, including by lifting his own party's redlines on rejoining the Customs Union or Single Market.

Instead, he continued to claim that it was enough to tinker around the margins of the existing Brexit deal, making the exaggerated claim that the Government had successfully "redefined our bond with the EU, building a new partnership that benefits both sides, sticking to our red lines while supporting British businesses, making food cheaper, and slashing red tape."

This flies in the face of the mounting body of evidence that Brexit has been an economic disaster, even with the small modifications achieved by the government so far. The US think tank, the National Bureau of Economic Research, recently published a study estimating that the decision to leave the EU had reduced the UK's GDP by between 6 to 8 percent. Another recent analysis, by the House of Commons library, estimated that Brexit is costing the Treasury up to 90 billion a year in lost tax revenue, and that it has cost the average British resident between 2,700 to 3,700 pounds per year.

Even the Times and Telegraph are now publishing articles acknowledging Brexit has been, in the words of Jeremy Warner for the Telegraph "an unmitigated economic failure." In the Times, Ryan Bourne, who described himself as one of the members of the small band of "Economists for Brexit" argued that it was time to face facts. "Brexit did not cause Britain's growth malaise, but it undoubtedly deepened it. Nor did it create our fiscal woes, though it worsened them too. Denial about this helps no-one. Indeed, a successful sovereign economic policy demands taking responsibility and facing the world as it is, not as we wish it to be."

But despite these about-faces, Starmer continues with the pretence that the UK can make Brexit a success, as long as it just engages with the EU bloc more skilfully.

This denial of reality extended to his remarks regarding the US. Starmer hail...