Why We Fight

Although managed decline may be good enough for such fripperies as national infrastructure, public health, the courts and education, it clearly does not suffice for the business of killing foreigners. Nevertheless, a National Johnson review of Global Britain's strategy for picking up more chips in the Great Game despite being smaller, poorer and unable to negotiate an international agreement seems to have run into trouble. There are complaints that the military are being unimaginative, despite their portrayal of Russia as clownishly inept and permanently on the verge of defeat while simultaneously poised to send its tanks rolling across Western Europe towards Dunkirk and the mainland. Some fifteen per cent of defence contracts have been delayed, including the Ajax armoured rattletrap which is five years behind schedule but sounds as if it will be jolly well worth the wait. Accordingly, now that a decent interval has passed since the greatest armed services in the world fled Afghanistan yet again, the Ministry for Wog-Bombing has decided to demand its share of the three hundred and fifty million a week that isn't being spent on the NHS. However, quite apart from the need for pork-barrel carrots to balance the gerrymander stick in the next general election, the chancellor may prove reluctant to shake the magic money tree, since clarity is lacking as to whether it would be preferable to start World War III with Russia or with the Heathen Chinee, whose insidious cunning extends to trashing slightly fewer countries than the international community has managed recently.