When I got to Chequers on Sunday morning the prime minister had clearly been up for most of the night and hitting the phones all morning with calls to fellow leaders in Europe and the Middle East as he and others scrambled to try to contain a very dangerous situation.
His primary message on Sunday was to try to reassure the public that the UK government was working to stabilise the region as best it could and press for a return to diplomacy.
But what struck me in our short interview was not what he did say but what he didn’t – what he couldn’t – say about the US strikes.
It was clear from his swerve on the question of whether the UK supported the strikes that the prime minister neither wanted to endorse US strikes nor overtly criticise President Trump.
Instead, his was a form of words – repeated later in a joint statement of the E3 (the UK, Germany and France) to acknowledge the US strikes and reiterate where they can agree: the need to prevent Iran having a nuclear weapon.
He also didn’t want to engage in the very obvious observation that President Trump simply isn’t listening to Sir Keir Starmer or other allies, who had been very publicly pressing for de-escalation all week, from the G7 summit in Canada to this weekend as European countries convened talks in Geneva with Iran.
It was only five days ago that the prime minister told me he didn’t think a US attack was imminent when I asked him what was going on following President Trump’s abrupt decision to quit the G7 early and convene his security council at the White House.
When I asked him if he felt foolish or frustrated that Trump had done that…
