Westminster is watching Cape Town with the nervous energy of a man who has just spotted his own reflection in a puddle of spilled G&T. The news that British police expertise has been requisitioned for a South African cocaine raid inquiry is not a diplomatic sidebar. It is a signal flare.
South African politics, already a tangle of factional feuds and corruption allegations, has now ingested the Met. The raid itself, a multi-million pound cocaine bust in a Cape Town warehouse, was a success. But the aftermath is a disaster. The inquiry has splintered. Accusations of political interference are flying. Key witnesses are recanting. And now, the British are in the room.
The optics are poisonous. For the ANC, already haemorrhaging support ahead of next year's elections, this looks like a confession. They cannot trust their own institutions. They need the former colonial power to sort out their mess. That is a gift to the opposition, who are already sharpening their knives.
But for Whitehall, this is a trap. The request for British police assistance came through the usual channels. Interpol. Bilateral agreements. A polite note from Pretoria. But the politics are uncontainable. The moment a British officer sets foot in a South African evidence room, they absorb the fallout. Every leak, every allegation of a cover-up, will be tagged with a British flavour. The South African press is already asking: what did the British find? Who are they protecting?
No one in the Home Office is smiling. They know the game. Once you are in, you cannot get out. The inquiry will demand more resources. More time. More exposure. And every step will be leaked to a journalist with an axe to grind.
This is a classic political escalation. A local scandal. A request for help. And suddenly you own the crisis. The British police are not peacemakers. They are hostages.
Back in Westminster, the Foreign Office is working the phones. But there is no clean exit. The only question is how far the contamination spreads. If the inquiry reaches into the upper echelons of the ANC, or if it touches British business interests in the region, then this becomes a full-blown crisis.
The cocaine is the least of it. The real drug is power. And everyone is hooked.
