Airstrip One

Is Britain preparing to intervene in Zimbabwe? - 4th December 2002, 23.37

Foreign policy is becoming rather divisive for the Blair administration and a triumph for their vaunted ethical foreign policy might rally the backbenches after the camp follower act we've seen for the past six months. Are they looking at Zimbabwe with its homophobic leader and its black-on-black genocide as a moral playground? Now that most of the white farmers have been taken out, there can be no insinuations of Anglo-Saxon racial preference or 21st century imperialism, if a police action were to take place.

British troops are now training in South Africa because it's cheap and effective. These are good reasons but the locale provides good training for a quick invasion.

Still, we have plenty of Fijian recruits after a cut in their armed forces, despite their peculiar proclivities. The Commonwealth is good for something.