Miliband: Unfit for Office; Beneath Contempt

The Chandlers are still experiencing hell, held, as they are, in captivity by a bunch of criminal renegades in Somalia, and all that the terrorist apologist and contaminated son of a Marxist Joe Slovo ally (you know, that murderous KGB placeman in South Africa in the 1970s) can say is:

Obviously there's a very high level of concern. Anyone watching that video will have seen why that is the case. We're using all of the networks we have in that part of the world, political and diplomatic, and we've been very clear with the Chandlers here about how we’re doing that. Obviously none of us are going to be satisfied until the Chandlers are safely home and that's why we're working very hard on this case

Yeah, right. "Working very hard on this case." Not losing a moment's sleep in a bed in a 135-room grace and favour mansion over a couple of Her Majesty's loyal subjects who happen to be middle class and who are, therefore, in the eyes of a Marxist like the cretinous non-entity Millipede, politically insignificant, more like.

I say again, this is precisely what our armed forces are for. If the SAS can't rescue these people, facing, as they are, certain death, then there is no point in having an SAS. And there is no point in imagining that the British government in any way represents the interests of, and/or is willing to protect the British people, in any way, anywhere, any more. Be, therefore, very afraid. This is a total, shameful betrayal, and a clear signal to the entire country that the current regime is terrifyingly unfit for office.

The Don Pacifico affair was probably not the high point in mid-Victorian international relations, but one can't help but feel that the motives behind Lord Palmerston's gung ho intervention on behalf of a spy with no more than a connection of service to Britain resonates far more now, in the context of the desperate plight of the Chandlers, than it did then in the case of a captured agent:

I therefore fearlessly challenge the verdict which this House, as representing a political, a commercial, a constitutional country, is to give on the question now brought before it; whether the principles on which the foreign policy of Her Majesty's Government has been conducted, and the sense of duty which has led us to think ourselves bound to afford protection to our fellow subjects abroad, are proper and fitting guides for those who are charged with the Government of England; and whether, as the Roman, in days of old, held himself free from indignity, when he could say Civis Romanus sum; so also a British subject, in whatever land he may be, shall feel confident that the watchful eye and the strong arm of England, will protect him against injustice and wrong.

As the commenter in the Times who provided this quotation says, Palmerston is currently spinning in his grave.

As for me, it's pretty clear now that this government is quite happy to allow British subjects, to whom it has a global duty of care, to be hideously abused - even murdered - by anyone who is so inclined to do so, and for Britain itself to be utterly humiliated in its subsequently - accurately - perceived impotence.

This is not a government that governs in the name of the British people. It's a government that governs in the name of itself. And nothing else.