Friday was the day that Joe Biden’s vaunted drive to put human rights back at the centre of US foreign policy slammed, as such drives usually do, into the brick wall of great power realpolitik.

As it had promised, the new administration obeyed the law laid down by Congress and ignored by its predecessor. It published an unclassified summary of the intelligence assessment that the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, “approved” the murder and dismemberment of the Saudi reformer and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.