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One of the sillier solipsisms in much British coverage of the Ukraine war is that everyone on the European continent is wet and wobbly and only we Brits in London are tough, purposeful and know what needs to be done to destroy Putin.

Actually it may be the other way round. Between our Platinum Queen now enjoying a secular canonisation and our Teflon Prime Minister whom nothing can shame or even disturb, British journalism has never been so inward-looking, obsessed with our past, our history, our pageantry, and our House of Cards political soap operas.

BBC Radio 4 ran ten minutes on its Six O’Clock News about the problems British fans faced in Paris, where Liverpool was defeated by Real Madrid. French police are even rougher on their own citizens but no British fan was killed, or even needed to go to hospital. Compared to these endless words on a football match punch-up, the inward looking BBC had relatively little on the struggle for liberty taking place only three hours flight time eastwards from Paris.

In recent days British papers ran more headlines and comment pieces about reverting to pints in place of litres — actually milk at Waitrose, like most supermarkets, is marked with both measures — or stones, pounds and ounces in place of kilos and grams than there was coverage about the conflict in Ukraine. Yet this is the biggest fight for European democracy and freedom since 1939-45.

Royal Platinum Jubilees only come around once or twice in a millennium. With all the grim news ahead, of 1970s style inflation, rising prices for all, a world food shortage, and already no sunflower oil to be found anywhere, who can begrudge Britain a party we can all share in to salute the Queen’s 70 years on the throne?

Boris Johnson probably wishes he could eradicate the word “party” from all the front pages and news bulletins. They show a somewhat navel-gazing nation, or at least its news media, compared with Continental journalists’ obsession with Ukraine, not domestic news and internal politics.

There are disagreements aplenty. The main German conservative newspapers, Die Welt and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, monstered Chancellor Olaf Scholz for his shilly-shallying over delivering heavy weapons he had promised President Zelensky. Sweden’s Svenska Dagbladet also highlighted the non-delivery of promised German arms.

By contrast, the leading Italian daily, Repubblica, showed a Russian strike on a Ukrainian artillery post equipped with Italian howitzers sent to kill Russians.

The Polish paper Gazeta Wyborcza, Eastern Europe’s equivalent of the Guardian, said the conflict should end by “crushing Russian offensive capabilities for years, with all its consequences, and incorporating our Ukrainian neighbours into Western Europe”.

The comment columns are full of arguments for and against talking to Putin or trying to find a negotiated way out. Long retired global diplomatic panjandrums like Henry Kissinger can advise Zelensky to swap territory for peace, but as the man who handed South Vietnam over to the cruelties and concentration camps of communist tyranny in Hanoi, Kissinger’s credibility is not what it was in continental Europe.

But the consensus seems to be holding that while some bellicose politicians in London, Washington and most European capitals are willing to fight to the last Ukrainian, the main leaders – Macron in France, Scholz in Germany, the presidents of the EU Council and Commission — make clear that they will only move in agreement with President Zelensky.

The new French Foreign Minister, Catherine Colonna, who was transferred from being French Ambassador in London to run the Quai d’Orsay, went to Kyiv this week. She insisted that while the Russian bombardment of Ukrainian towns continued, now was not the time for negotiations.

Attention in France has switched to the death of a 32-year-old French journalist, Fréderic Leclerc-Imhoff, killed in a Russian bombing attack on a humanitarian convoy trying to escape from East Ukraine. Le Figaro reported an emotional tweet by President Macron about the death of the journalist, who “was in Ukraine to show the realities of war”. “To all those engaged in the difficult mission of informing us I repeat the unconditional support of France,” Macron declared.

The Greek daily Katherimini front paged the Turkish President Erdogan’s veto on Sweden and Finland joining Nato. The Scandinavians refuse to bow to his diktat that Helsinki and Stockholm must hand over Kurdish refugees as the price of their national security.

Most papers give space to the refusal of Hungary’s Europhobic nationalist leader, Viktor Orban, to cooperate with other European nations in sanctioning oil deliveries from Russia.

There is praise, especially in Poland, for the stand taken by Boris Johnson in support of Ukraine, but on the whole there is little coverage of what London thinks or does in this conflict. Margaret Thatcher was a big European player in shaping Europe’s future in the immediate aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse after 1989.

But the Tory Party defenestrated her as Tory MPs feared she would cost them the 1992 election – a fate that hangs suspended over Boris Johnson’s head. Tony Blair was the main EU leader in tackling the genocidal killing of Serb death squads in Bosnia and Kosovo. He persuaded Bill Clinton to help bring the decade-long Balkans wars initiated by Slobodan Milosevic to an end.

Today, however, the declarations of a British prime minister from Brexit London have far less weight — in fact almost none at all, compared with the role played by a Margaret Thatcher or a Tony Blair.

Some of the London commentariat highlight what they see, often correctly, as the hesitations or weakness of EU leaders like Macron or Scholz. But the press in Europe is just as hard and harsh in its criticism of wobbly leaders and needs no lecture from a Britain once again enjoying its moment of isolation from the affairs of Europe.

European journalists are descending on London to cover the Platinum Jubilee and are agog with fascination at the idea that once again the Tory Party may decapitate a prime minister without consulting voters.

But each European nation is having its own intense discussion on Ukraine. So far the support for Zelensky is clear and the desire to see Putin humbled is not weakening.

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