Cave In, Cover Arse: The British Spirit Strikes Again

The Upper Miliband having brought his vast political clout and formidable strength of character to bear on the new American Secretary of State, it appears that the special relationship, with all the commitment to Saudi values thus implied, remains as gooey as ever it was. Thanks to a timely threat by the US that it will stop sharing intelligence with the Poodle Archipelago, no evidence about possible MI5 complicity in torture at the Guantánomaly can be released.

The reaction of the Upper Miliband when Hillary strapped on the dildo and bade him yield up his smooth-bore can, of course, only be imagined. Doubtless the Upper Miliband wrestled long and hard with whatever pastel-blue butterfly passes for his conscience before decisively rejecting the option of being the first British foreign secretary in sixty-five years to declare independence from Washington. As so often when the possibility of embarrassment to the Government is both genuine and ministerially manifest, national security has been deemed to be at stake. Given that the state of Britain's national security has hovered somewhere in the gibbering-insanity band of "very serious indeed" ever since July 2005, with comparatively few casualties beyond the reputation and credibility of the Metropolitan Police, I confess I find it difficult to muster much concern.

The depth and strength of any moral objections Daveybloke's Cuddly Conservatives may have to kidnapping and torture was evidenced in the deafening silence of the Shadow Foreign Secretary, who presumably had some more profitable use for his time. It was left to a back-bencher to demand a statement on the matter from the Government.