I am now back from Montenegro and looking forward to our Live Stream today.

We are back to full scale war between the US and Iran with both the US and Iran now saying that the MoU is dead. This has been a disastrous episode in mismanaged diplomacy, which has sharply reduced the prospect of a negotiated agreement between the parties. Whilst the Iranians must take part of the blame - they had a coherent strategy at the start of the war which was to refuse interim deals, which they should have stuck with - the greater fault lies with the Trump administration, which continues to conduct diplomacy in a chaotic and eccentric way, and without good faith.

The situation with the SMO in my opinion is just as bad. The Russians are making it increasingly clear that they believe that the Trump administration, up to and beyond Anchorage, was taking them for a ride, trying to trick them into a ceasefire the Russians had no intention of agreeing to. When it became clear this would not succeed the Trump administration chose escalation, going all the way up to an attempt in December to assassinate Putin himself. The recent drone offensive - which in Russia is overwhelmingly seen as a US project - is part of that escalation, as is the recent revival of talk of the 'bone crushing sanctions' that the late and unlamented Lindsey Graham once authored.

The result is a total collapse of trust, with a whole succession of Russian officials, up to and including Putin himself, now essentially ruling out a negotiated settlement of the conflict, and talking instead of military victory.

On the last point, I think far too many people are misreading the fact that contacts between the Russians and the Americans sporadically continue, with occasional calls, all but one initiated by Trump, still happening between the US and Russian Presidents. Russian policy however is never to refuse dialogue, which in Moscow is seen as especially important in times of crisis. In reality what even a cursory check of Russian readouts shows, and what critics tend to miss, is that the 'dialogue' now happening between the US and Russia has been drained of all content, and is now hollow. Far from construing this as appeasement, my own sense is that the Americans find it infuriating, and are frustrated by it.

Meanwhile in Britain we must look forward, if that is the right word, to Prime Minister Burnham on Monday, even as the nation - but not please note the political class - mourn the murder of Anne Widdecombe, one of the few people in politics who lived up to her principles, and the political nature of whose murder was obvious to everyone, except of course the police, the commentariat, and the wider political class.

Last but not least, in Germany VW is now shedding hundreds of thousands of jobs, with no sign of Germany's industrial crisis reaching its end point. On the contrary, it appears to be accelerating.

So much to talk about today.