Shoes Too Small To Fit Our Feet?

Has Keir Starmer misled the House of Commons over the Chinese spy case? Very probably. Has Lisa Nandy misled the House in the course of, as I struggle to write without falling off my chair laughing, her Urgent Statement about a football match? Unquestionably.

And has Maccabi Tel Aviv made complete fools of Starmer, Nandy, Shabana Mahmood, Kemi Badenoch, Ed Davey and Nigel Farage by banning its own fans from that match after Sunday's far from unusual riot, thereby vindicating Aston Villa, West Midlands Police, Birmingham City Council Safety Advisory Group, and Ayoub Khan MP? Hilariously. That time, I did indeed fall off my chair laughing.

Perhaps the Israelis should teach themselves to play the American sports? There is, though, no room for levity in the IDF's total non-adherence to the ceasefire, nor in the bodies from Sde Teiman, nor in the settlers' blockade of the predominantly Christian (and notably beer-brewing) West Bank town of Taybeh, nor in their brutal beating of farmers of both sexes who were bringing in the olive harvest at Turmus Ayya, of which between 80 and 90 per cent of the inhabitants are American citizens or Green Card holders. Perhaps the Israelis had better not teach themselves to play the American sports after all?

As depicted in Forrest Gump, a key role in Richard Nixon's pursuit of détente with China was played by table tennis. Yet these days, the Government that granted visas to every foreign speaker at the Unite the Kingdom rally has refused one to Yasin Shoari, an 11-year-old Iranian table tennis prodigy who has therefore been unable to travel to Sheffield to take up his earned place in the International Table Tennis World Hopes Week and Challenge. So much for World Hope. What has Matthew Syed to say about this case? And if our state were capable of being threatened by an 11-year-old, then we would already have lost.

In fact, of course, we have already lost to the state that ordered us to ban Shoari. We shall remain under its Occupation until we fought back. If we used social media to take a cover version of Free Nelson Mandela, changed to Free Marwan Barghouti, to the Christmas Number One spot, then it would be no exaggeration to say that Starmer would try to subject us to something not far short of martial law. For that and every other reason, let's do it. Everything has to start somewhere. China is many things, but it is the least of our immediate worries.