David Cameron was quite right to drop in on Donald Trump

Editorial: The former president and his supporters in Congress need to hear the message that the support for Ukraine is not only just, but also in America’s interest

Cameron criticised Trump when both men were heads of state but now is a good time to breach protocols (AFP)

The Foreign Office insisted that “it is standard practice for ministers to meet opposition candidates as part of their routine international engagement”. This is the opposite of the truth, which is that the convention is for ministers to avoid engagement with non-government politicians during election periods abroad to avoid giving the impression of interfering in another country’s politics.

But the convention is only a guideline, and David Cameron was quite right to adapt it to the needs of the hour. No one would have interpreted the foreign secretary’s visit to Donald Trump at his home in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, as a political endorsement of Mr Trump, the Republican presidential candidate-presumptive.

After all, one of the reasons for wondering about the wisdom of the stopover is that Lord Cameron has said some pretty rude things about Mr Trump in the past. When Mr Trump was president, David Cameron as prime minister called his “Muslim ban” travel policy “divisive, stupid and wrong”.