Four Placemen of the Apocalypse

Despite the vaunted accomplishment of our civilising mission in the Middle East, it appears the Royal Air Force has recently resumed the crusade in Iraq, to the inevitable patriotic strains of near-total silence from our free and cantankerous media. Nevertheless, if Britain's military and intelligence chiefs had any illusions that the recent VE Day rah-rah demonstrated any greater respect for expert judgement than Matt Hancock's sniggering applause for NHS staff, we must hope that they have now been disabused. Like its most devoted acolytes, the Reverend Blair and his chums, the Conservative Party simply adores war; but that doesn't mean the Government has to listen to a lot of confusing advice from people who might subvert a perfectly good plan by knowing something about the real world. Accordingly, Britain's national security council has been suspended in favour of a cabal which Britain's leading liberal newspaper worries is "all-male", as if the presence of Priti Patel or Elizabeth Truss might provide a welcome Clausewitzian touch. The males in question are the Treasury spad; the thuggish Minister for Wogs, Frogs and Huns; the jabbering homunculus Michael Gove, who has read a book or two by David Irving; and Matt Hancock, the sum of whose experience in the national security business comprises dynamically waiting for the coronavirus to mutate into a form that only kills immigrants. Presumably on the orders of the prime minister, Dominic Cummings, the presence of the Secretary of State for Wog-Bombing has been deemed unnecessary; perhaps because it would bring the playpen dangerously close to expertise. The enemies of the realm are doubtless quaking in their jackboots.