The UK’s trade with Israel’s Jewish settlements is a tiny fraction of its £6 billion ($8bn) overall trade with Israel. And after two decades of largely ineffectual “threats” from Europe to start labelling settlement goods, Israel long ago devised ways to conceal the provenance of such trade. It simply relabels items from the settlements as “made in Israel”.

This is why the Foreign Office has long argued a ban on trade with settlements would be impossible to implement. The “material impact”, as British diplomats are reportedly telling Washington, will be virtually non-existent.