Indian Mutiny

Yet more evidence has emerged of the urgent necessity for a new Pax Britannica extending far beyond the present glorious reaches of Belfast, Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands. A former jewel in the imperial crown seems hell-bent on misusing its independence, falling away from the advances in civilisation so recently bequeathed it.The government of India is threatening to tilt the level playing field that is the free market in fossil fuels, and force every car in the Raj to become electrically-powered within a decade and a half; all because of a trifling depreciation in serfs and sepoys of the kind which our own Imperial Haystack has been shrugging off with a manly British snigger for years on end. Should India continue in this unconstructive behaviour, at a time when the British government is leading the world into a frackable future of methane-heated growth, the Imperial Haystack's sense of duty may yet dictate that he dust off the pith helmets and polish up the rah-rah from 1857. Meanwhile, Britain's secretary of state for the environment continues to be Andrea Leadsom.