So the mullahs in Tehran have decided to rattle their sabres once again, this time in Lebanon, and Her Majesty's Government's response is to call for a UN Security Council session. One can almost hear the ghost of Palmerston laughing from the grave. The Iranian regime, that theocratic relic of a bygone era, has been allowed to fester and metastasise for decades, and now it threatens to drag the entire Levant into another war.
Yet our leaders reach for the telephone to New York as though the UN were anything more than a talking shop for autocracies and failed states. This is not 1914; this is a slow-motion replay of 1938, with the West refusing to see the storm gathering on the horizon. The Iranian playbook is clear: destabilise, intimidate, and expand.
And what do we do? We call for a session. We deplore.
We express concern. Might we, just this once, try deploying a modicum of strategic thought instead of hand-wringing? Or perhaps we are too busy enjoying our avocado toast and Netflix to notice that the world is burning.
The Victorians understood that empire required resolve. What do we understand? The entitlement to complain about the consequences of our own cowardice.
