Fury at Argie Boat Ban

Daveybloke's hopes of gaining a parliamentary majority from a second rah-rah over the Falklands have been jacked up another notch. The president of Argentina, who is already foreign and a woman and is afflicted with a German-sounding surname, has somehow induced Mercosur, a South American trading bloc, to ban boats with the Falkland Islands flag. "The United Kingdom is a permanent member of the UN security council yet they do not respect a single, not a single resolution," Kirchner said in Montevideo, clearly unaware that the United Kingdom respects every single resolution that suits the convenience of the United States. "Nor should they come at us with the excuse of the dictatorship or the war from 30 years ago," Kirchner foamed, "because they were the ones who would speak with the dictators", doubtless an uncharitable allusion to Thatcher's beautiful spiritual bond with the likes of Pinochet. Kirchner even urged the Government to "talk, talk, talk," for all the world as if Daveybloke were a public sector trade union to be invited round a table for the sake of appearances before one lets fly the grapeshot.

As soon as the Bullingdon hilarity wore off (the guffaws of "calm down, dear" must have been audible in Piccadilly), the Ministry for Wogs, Frogs and Huns found itself just about capable of responding: "We are discussing this urgently with countries in the region," said a spokesbeing. Presumably the countries in question are receiving extensive and much-needed advice about the perils of entering into trading blocs with foreigners, coupled with urgent exhortations to protect their sovereignty by joining a clapped-out colonial power on its carefree slide down the pecking order of Washington's client states. "But no one should doubt our determination to protect the Falkland Islanders' right to determine their own political future," perorated the spokesbeing; which, along with all the rest of it, is the part that Labour agrees with.