A Tactful Reminder

Daveybloke, the Cuddly Conservative, has responded to the tragedy in Norway with an announcement that the British government will "review our own security at home", presumably with a view to ensuring that the English Defence League does not feel harassed enough to take up arms against the Young Conservatives. Daveybloke also made the best of the occasion by demonstrating that there is no event so horrible that it cannot be used to remind everybody who won the war. "Britain and Norway have been good allies and neighbours in very dark days before," Daveybloke burbled, referring to Britain's violation of Norway's neutrality by mining her waters in the spring of 1940 and the inept military campaign which followed the invasion by Nazi Germany. So good an ally and neighbour was Britain that, although the decision to withdraw was made on 24 May, the Norwegians were not informed until a week later. Churchill, who had envisioned a Nordic alliance of Britain and Scandinavia against the Slavic menace of Bolshevism, was no doubt rather disappointed. As a Conservative prime minister whose wog-bombing credentials are still in the balance as far as his party is concerned, Daveybloke was hardly the bloke to let such an opportunity pass with a mere expression of condolence over the demise of a few dozen left-wing foreigners.