Eleven dead in Gaza City, and Britain tuts from its imperial armchair. How predictable. How utterly Victorian.
The Foreign Office issues its familiar call for 'immediate de-escalation,' as if the Israelis and Palestinians were unruly schoolboys caught scrapping in the quad. They are not. They are civilisational proxies locked in a death spiral that mirrors the late Roman Empire's provincial wars.
What we witness is not a conflict. It is a decomposition. The old rules of just war, proportionality and distinction, have been replaced by the law of the kleptocratic strongman.
Israel bombs with surgical precision tailored to its own political survival. Hamas fires rockets with the mathematical certainty that they will provoke more funerals than photo opportunities. And Britain?
Britain plays the liberal hegemon, a ghost haunting a theatre it no longer owns. The Empire is dead. Its moral authority died with Suez.
Now it issues statements. It does not impose consequences. The eleven dead are not a tragedy.
They are a symptom of a world that has forgotten how to be civilised. De-escalation is a fantasy when both sides believe annihilation is the only negotiator. Rome fell because it stopped believing in its own laws.
We are watching the same autumnal decay. But do not worry. The Foreign Secretary will express his deep concern.
That always helps.
