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Alarums and excursions in the Gulf, after the Saudis lost half their oil production over the weekend to an Iranian drone. In Washington, the Trump administration is already missing John

Bolton, the man who should now be coordinating a proportionate Western response to Tehran’s latest aggression, but whom the President fired last week. Against Bolton’s advice, Donald Trump

craves a meeting with President Rouhani in New York on the fringes of the UN General Assembly next week. For his Saudi ally, this would add a gratuitous insult to the injury sustained by

their main oil refinery. The price of oil has rocketed and could even double: good news for oil exporters (one of the biggest of which, thanks to fracking, is now the United States), but bad

for the global economy. Meanwhile, Boris Johnson has a little excursion of his own to Luxembourg. Incredibly, this  will be his first encounter as Prime Minister with the outgoing

Commission President Juncker and Brexit negotiatior Barnier. Officially, this is described as a “lunchtime meeting”. Translated, this means “lunch”; it is unlikely to be a short, let alone a

dry one. The British hope that a lubricated and demob-happy “Jean-Claude” (as Boris refers to him) will overrule the implacable Michel Barnier and agree to flexibility on the backstop. The

meeting might have been made for a festive scene by that great Flemish painter Pieter Brueghel the Elder: Boris as the importunate English merchant adventurer, plying Juncker, the dissipated

Duke of Luxembourg, with jugs of Burgundy, while Barnier as the grim reaper looks on ominously. Brueghel would have adorned “The Luncheon in Luxembourg” with allegories of a no-deal Brexit:

hourglasses counting down to Hallowe’en, pâtés, cheeses and other Continental delicacies, soon to vanish from British supermarket shelves and a copy of David Cameron’s memoirs open on the

dining table, spattered with wine as Boris refills Juncker’s goblet. In art — even imagined art — there is truth. Boris is banking on the Eurocrats’ desire to have done with Brexit. Further

extensions are a mug’s game, as he hopes to tell Jean-Claude in his cups. Better far for both sides to dish their inconvenient allies: for the EU, the diehard Remainers in Westminster; for

the British, the DUP hardliners in Belfast. Let the backstop be fudged, a deal done, and we can all go home. Yet both sides know that the other has potentially fatal weaknesses. Boris

Johnson could be undone at any moment — perhaps as soon as tomorrow, when the Supreme Court will rule on the legality of suspending Parliament. The Prorogation Crisis is as baffling to

onlookers across the Channel as every other act of the Brexit drama — which, like every Shakespearean tragedy, looks likely to end with almost everybody dead. Having already despatched most

of his Tory colleagues, Boris is now determined to slaughter the massed ranks of the Opposition parties too. But is he Henry V or Richard III? The EU, too, is less formidable than it

pretends. European economies in the North are going south; those on the Mediterranean are still becalmed. From East to West, the peasants are still revolting. Only in the gilded palaces of

Paris, Brussels and Berlin does the mantra of “More Europe” still echo through the corridors. At any moment, a shock could tip the EU into recession — a hike in energy prices, perhaps,

arising from conflict in the Gulf. Iran unleashed could wreak havoc, not only across the Middle East, but in Europe too. There is no obvious connection between President Trump’s decision to

let Bolton go last week and today’s liquid lunch in Brussels. Yet if the emboldened Iranians are likely to preoccupy the European chancelleries for the foreseeable future, there might just

be a window during which a deal might be done to lay to rest the ghost of Brexit. Boris Johnson could be the unintended beneficiary of Kaiser Donald’s bold, bad decision to drop his

Bismarckian pilot. Alarums for the West and excursions for Boris: it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good.