In a development as predictable as a pint of warm ale flopping onto a Lancashire pub carpet, the denizens of Whitehall have today deployed their most fearsome rhetorical weapon: a politely worded plea for ‘restraint.’ This, as the Israeli Defence Forces merrily expand their ground offensive into Lebanon, no doubt looking to collect the entire set of border skirmishes in the region. One pictures Foreign Office mandarins, tweed-clad and clutching cups of lukewarm tea, tutting into the void while tank shells whistle overhead.
‘Gentlemen, please. A spot of restraint, if you don’t mind. We’ve the twitching remnants of an empire to maintain, and this sort of unseemly hullabaloo interferes with the shipping forecast.
’ The sheer audacity of expecting a military campaign to pause for a strongly worded memorandum is the kind of fantastical thinking that gives diplomacy a bad name. It’s like asking a charging rhino to kindly reconsider its trajectory because you’ve just polished your monocle. Meanwhile, the actual denizens of the region, those with the misfortune of living atop this particular powder keg, are no doubt relieved to hear that Britain, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to weigh in with the moral equivalent of a limp lettuce leaf.
Bravo, chaps. The world’s problems are surely solved now.
