Appearances Deceive

After a bit of a flop in the old Dunkirk spirit on the part of the perfidious French, who still seem to think mere evidence has a place in criminal investigations, various Euro-wogs have joined their amusingly-accented voices to Britain's in condemning Russia over the Salisbury nerve gas attack. Macron apparently changed his mind after a personal phone call from the dead-eyed warden of HM Prison UK; doubtless she told him she wasn't making it up, and one can certainly sympathise with his need to get her off the line as expeditiously as possible. Much the same must apply to the Lithuanian foreign minister, who staggered out of a meeting with the Imperial Haystack blaming Russia unequivocally, but also indulging in crypto-Corbynite deviationism with the implication that Britain looks weak thanks to, of all things, Brexit. Clearly the Lithuanian foreign minister has failed, just as Vladimir Putin has failed, to appreciate the diabolical Great Game subtlety of screaming "Nazi!" at one's trading partners and then caving in, only to withdraw the cave-in a a little later in the popular press, so that the poor foreign fools will never find out until it's far too late. With this sort of soft power revving beneath our bonnets, it is hardly surprising that fatalities from the Salisbury WMD remain somewhat fewer than those from even a mildly meritorious drone attack.