So a three-year-old child is airlifted from the carcass of a failed state, and Britain pats itself on the back. How very Victorian. We rush in with our helicopters and our humanitarian credentials, ignoring the fact that we are witnessing not a natural disaster but a slow-motion political suicide that has been decades in the making.
Venezuela was once the richest country in South America. Now it is a cautionary tale in what happens when a nation abandons competence for ideology. The salvage operation is touching, but it is also a distraction.
For every child we save, a thousand more are trapped in the wreckage of a system that was allowed to rot by the very international community that now postures as saviours. We ought to ask ourselves: why does it take a three-year-old on a gurney to remind us that we have been complicit in the decay? The answer is uncomfortable.
It is easier to fund rescue missions than to confront the structural neglect that made them necessary. We are the fire brigade that refuses to check the wiring. Call me a cynic, but I see the parallels with Rome’s grain dole: a spectacle of generosity that masks a deeper rot.
The child will live, but the nation will not. And Britain, ever the moralist, will move on to the next tragedy, leaving the ashes to cool on their own.
