In a development that has sent the usual shivers of performative horror through the Westminster corridors, a Montreal shooting has left one police officer and one civilian dead, prompting UK counter-terror bigwigs to hastily review their protocols. The news arrives with the familiar stench of bureaucratic panic, as if someone just realised the emperor’s new protocols are made of the same flimsy stuff as his trousers.
Let us, dear reader, wade into this cesspool of officialese. A gunman, presumably tired of the polite Canadian consensus, opened fire, killing a constable and a passerby. The constable, no doubt, was a fine fellow with a fondness for doughnuts and order. The civilian, a poor sod who had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But what does the UK do? It reaches for the good old counter-terror manual, a document so devoid of soul it might as well be a spreadsheet.
Ah, the counter-terror protocol review. A ritual as meaningless as a bishop blessing a tank. These reviews involve men in suits squinting at diagrams, muttering about 'multi-agency coordination' and 'threat levels'. They will produce a report, thick as a brick, filled with terms like 'resilience' and 'preventative measures'. And then nothing will change, except the budget for tasers and the number of signs telling us to report suspicious behaviour.
Meanwhile, in the real world, a shooter with a grudge and a gun has demonstrated that no amount of hand-wringing can stop a determined lunatic. The heroism of the dead officer is beyond reproach, but the system that sent him into harm's way with a baton and a prayer deserves a thorough kicking. The UK's response is a symphony of irrelevance: a review of protocols when what is needed is a review of the fundamental absurdity of a society that fetishises safety while arming its police with the same effectiveness as a Sunday league water pistol fight.
Let us not forget the gin-soaked reality: the UK has its own history of such tragedies. The memory of Jo Cox, of Lee Rigby, of the Manchester Arena bombing, all of which prompted... you guessed it, protocol reviews. And yet here we are, still playing the same old tune on a broken fiddle. The Montreal shooting is a mirror held up to our own incompetence, but the powers that be will simply polish the frame and pretend the reflection is someone else's problem.
So raise a glass, if you dare, to the dead. But do not raise a toast to the men who will now spend their days fiddling with PowerPoint slides and jargon, because they are the real farce. The only protocol worth reviewing is the one that allows them to keep their jobs while the rest of us look on in horrified amusement. Until then, the only thing counter-terrorised is common sense.
