Extremely Loud About Being Incredibly Close

Given the sufferings of Ukraine at the hands of the fiend Putin and his fellow travellers in the Conservative Party, the response of Her Majesty's Government has been more or less what one would expect. Downing Street is working "incredibly closely" ("world-beatingly closely" will evidently have to wait for a more Churchillian juncture in the conflict) with Ukraine's neighbouring countries, and has already dispatched three hundred and fifty extra troops to Poland to assist anyone crossing the border in re-evaluating their travel plans. Once the Government had announced its policies, Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition uncompromisingly hastened to demand the exact same policies, viz. keeping Ukrainian refugees in countries neighbouring Ukraine, while condescending to permit a brief stay of deportation to those with family members in Britain. The former Deputy Conservatives, who were quite happy with the hostile environment as long as they had their little red boxes, took a more sarcastic line, calling for a full resettlement scheme and a five-year funding package for councils that take Ukraininan nationals. They are unlikely, after all, to be Muslim or to share excessive amounts of genetic material with the Windrush generation. Vexatiously enough, an immigration lawyer confused the issue by pointing out that the Government's own racial purity law will criminalise Ukrainian refugees, just as its policing law will criminalise the kind of anti-war protests now taking place in Russia.