When Something or Other Happens and Somebody Ought to Do Something About It

War can be a very nasty thing, especially when the beastly Russians have a veto over whether Britain can wage it, the shadow Minister for Being the Son of Another Minister has argued. In a particularly tactful intervention to commemorate Armistice Day, Hilary Benn expressed his opinion that the refusal or inability of the UN to engage in wog-bombing should not prevent the well-intentioned from learning the lessons of previous conflicts and having a bit of fun on their own initiative. Benn compared the business of not bombing wogs to the business of standing by and allowing domestic violence: "A crime is a crime, and the sovereign state of the kitchen or the bedroom no longer provides any protection against enforcement of the law," he profundified, although he does not seem to have made clear what retribution would be proper for, to take a random example, the spectre of Jack Straw.

It is certainly deplorable that Russia, which attacks other countries in the absence of any direct threat and uses bombs that really hurt, should have a say over the British government's refugee creation programme. While admitting that the UN may have a role to play in allowing British forces to operate under the "peacekeeper" rubric, Benn also praised a French proposal whereby the permanent members of the UN security council would voluntarily abstain from using their veto. Unfortunately, it seems likely that making this work in Britain's interests would require a degree of skill in international diplomacy - a discipline long abandoned by the Ministry for Wogs, Frogs and Huns in favour of grovelling to the biggest bully on the block (be that the Americans, the Chinese or the back-bench baboons) and slaughtering large numbers of brown people in the hope of muddling through.