Britain's Do-Nothing Contingency

The Times looks at Britain's so-called contingency plans for military intervention in Zimbabwe that reveals New Labour as a load of gutless wonders more worried about how they are seen by tin-pot African dictators rather than cleaning up the mess their predecessors made of Zimbabwe a generation ago at Lancaster House.

Any grown up nation worth its salt would have had plans that ran along the lines of putting together a special forces task force out of Diego Garcia with the mission of taking out the Mugabe regime in toto while the Foreign Office gave a gentle message to whichever country whose airspace was being crossed that the RAF can go through their defences like butter if they don't cooperate. And if any of the assortment of petty tyrants and kelptocrats who infest central Africa want to call it colonialism, they'd best say it very, very softly.

Unfortunately, Whitehall is in a rather infantile stage that demands that civilised men defer to barbarians and the MoD's plans, such as they are, amount to little more than Britain sitting on its hands while Zimbabwe's neighbours decide whether it's worth deposing a fellow dictator and then watching Her Majesty's armed forces hold Mebki's coattails. Or until hell freezes over, which is far more likely.

I assume that Mr. Brown has a barber shave him, because I cannot imagine how he looks himself in the mirror.