A Disastrous Country

Daveybloke, whose Ministry for War and the Colonies cannot even order and equip a couple of aircraft carriers without getting into trouble, has been doing the Blair thingy again; this time in connection with the imminent Werritty's War on Iran. The subtlety of Daveybloke's approach may be gauged by the fact that even Britain's leading liberal newspaper has noticed the parallel with the Blair press releases which its reporters so faithfully transcribed in the run-up to the glorious crusade in Iraq.

Anyway, Daveybloke has apparently been briefed by a national security adviser that we are forty-five minutes from doom once again, and it has gone straight to that shiny little head of his. As a result, Daveybloke has been making oracular pronouncements about Iran's burgeoning intercontinental missile capability, for which the actual evidence is, as so often these days, nil. Daveybloke also did his bit for international relations by proclaiming that, despite its west-destroying ambitions, Iran is not at all a "mini-superpower", but a "disastrous country" with mass unemployment and a dysfunctional economy, rather like Britain or the United States. Indeed, rumour has it that Iran goes so far as to let religious zealots interfere with the country's government and the education of its children, which certainly couldn't happen here.