Roman Holiday

Team Starmer's sister in pragmatism, Giorgia Meloni, has sent another African back where he belongs; but the response from certain quarters has been less enthusiastic than was presumably hoped. The deportee is a Libyan general and prison warder whose régime has been accused of arbitrary imprisonment, torture and all those other little treats that are too good for migrants and troublemakers. There is an ICC warrant for his detention, but the heirs of Mussolini were disinclined to sanction his arrest and the Italian security services flew him home to a hero's welcome: something Team Starmer's sister in anti-communism, the sainted Thatcher, wasn't quite able to achieve for her Chilean chum Augusto Pinochet. For its own part, Libya has reacted in a manner worthy of a state which Britain helped to wog-bomb into democracy and civilisation.