Another test for our fantasy of neutrality

That British prime minister Theresa May turned to her European neighbours after she concluded Russia was behind the nerve-agent attack in Salisbury points to an obvious truth.

Old friends are best — especially if Britain’s “special relationship” with America hardly seems as reliable as it might have been once imagined — especially since US President Trump, against security advice, congratulated President Putin on his victory in Russia’s charade elections.

Ms May turned to the entity her Brextremist colleagues excoriate.

Britain was not isolated in the days after the Salisbury attack, but it did get a foretaste of what it might be like to be alone in a polarised world. That cannot have been a warm feeling.

How Brexit hardliners reacted is not recorded.

That sense of discomfort may be behind Ms May’s decision to encourage European leaders to expel Russian intelligence agents from their countries in a bid to dismantle the Kremlin’s networks across Europe, warning that the west faces a long-term threat from Putin.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar is to consider the request, though the Russian ambassador to Ireland Yury Filatov warned that doing so would be regarded as an “unfriendly move”.

Just as Ms May discovered, Mr Varadkar may discover that his position is not as simple as it might appear.

Once again the theory, the fantasy, of pure neutrality runs into an unavoidable choice between right and wrong.