Mick Hartley

Another Friday, another pathetic column in the Times from Simon Jenkins. He is praising South Africa’s vibrant democracy, achieved without Western military intervention, and draws this important conclusion:

Were we now contemplating the South Africa of the 1980s, I have an awful sense that our responses would be different. Tony Blair and George Bush would be threatening military action “to enforce majority rule”. They would be targeting missiles at Pretoria. They would chant apartheid’s atrocities and blast its cities. Mr Blair would preach and thousands would die.

This is so ridiculous that it doesn’t require any comment, except to wonder how the Times’ chief columnist got to the point where he consistently writes drivel like this. A couple of months back he dismissed the threat of Al Qaeda in the Spectator, in an article published on the same day as the Madrid bombing, but nothing seems to dent his self-belief. Iraq seems to have unhinged a great number of people.

Can’t he be persuaded to do another of his books – “England’s Thousand Best Public Toilets” or some such – and leave the political commentary to people who have a clue?