Targeted Responsibility

Now that the Ministry for Wogs, Frogs and Huns has efficientised its sanctions régime to avoid discrimination against human rights abusers who know their place, Britain's pre-eminent global export after tax-dodgers can at last continue in its wealth-creating buccaneeritude. Having once more seen off the enemies of the people and their contumelious legalisms, Her Majesty's Government is ready to resume sales of weapons to its favourite Islamic fundamentalists despite (or, in Standard English, because of) the continuing profitability of the head-choppers' rampage in Yemen. It would certainly be a poor fulfilment of Britain's export responsibilities if Her Majesty's Government were to take a few rotten apples as representing the entire barrel, as so many incautious persons have already done with such diverse and venerable institutions as Hollywood, the Church of Rome, the Metropolitan Police, the Conservative Party and the slave trade.