Storm In A Teacup

Nothing like the Litvinenko Report deserves to be taken with the slightest seriousness if it contains the word "probably" in its conclusion.

That highly questionable character ought never to have been allowed into this country, where his presence placed our own people at very grave danger, although he was an undesirable for a number of other reasons, too.

That this incident was allowed to become public at all can only have been a decision of the utmost political cynicism. But the Bomb Russia Brigade will never be satisfied.

Yet this "inquiry" was held purely in order to placate that Brigade. Even if its findings were broadly accurate, then that would more than suggest that the same kind of thing went on in reverse.

In the same way, Michael Fallon bemoans Russian bombing of Syria, which is serious rather than superficial action in the cause on which the Government divided the House of Commons purely in order to divide the Labour Party, since the action pursuant to that Division has been of only the most half-hearted and tokenistic kind.

In Geneva on Monday, the chief negotiator for the Syrian opposition is to be Mohammed Alloush, of the Saudi-backed Islamist terrorist organisation, Jaysh al-Islam. Russia recognises him and it for what they are.

But none of this mattered to David Cameron, so long as strikes were launched on Jeremy Corbyn.

Cameron has that same sole motivation where Trident is concerned. He has never made much of a defensive case, and he no longer attempts to make any at all.

He sounds exactly like a Labour MP of the trade union Right. The GMB ought to send his constituency party a few thousand pounds. The "jobs" argument, you see, splits the Labour Party, and that is all that matters to Cameron.

At least according to what has today become the official version of events, Trident is such a deterrent that Russia thinks nothing of administering a radioactive poison to a British citizen in a London cup of tea, that great common love of the British and the Russians. And the Iranians, come to that.

Everyone in Russia knows perfectly well that nothing radioactive is ever coming their way from Britain. The defensive case for Trident, or for nuclear weapons in general, cannot be compatible with today's report on Litvinenko.

But the Government has never sought to make any such case, anyway.