UN Vote: Majority Isolated

Not content with allowing rapporteurs to make libellous allegations about the Conservative Party's idleness police, the general assembly of the United Nations has very carelessly voted against Britain's occupation of the Chagos Islands, and has thereby placed itself tragically out of step with the mainstream of the international community. A hundred and sixteen countries voted in favour of the Senegalese motion, while Britain was supported only by the Maldives and by the Conservative Party's fellow race-baiters in Australia, Israel, Hungary and the United States. Fifty-six countries abstained, which naturally indicates that they were uneasy about backing the motion; who, after all, could ever be uneasy about backing Britain? In any case, those who pass for diplomats in the present Ministry for Wogs, Frogs and Huns had already resigned themselves to defeat. The problem with the Chagos Islands is a problem of decolonisation; and despite the rest of us having long since drawn lines, moved forward and accomplished missions, decolonisation remains, in the delicate phrasing of Britain's leading liberal newspaper, a totemic issue for the uncivilised tribes.