Bush is leading us to tragedy

The Saudi ambassador tells Boris Johnson that America is hated and war on Iraq is mad

‘No, no,’ says the Saudi ambassador, ‘this is how you do it. You cannot lift your arm above the shoulder, and you must do it sideways.’ He moves alongside, a big man with a faint resemblance to Leon Brittan, and makes a thwacking motion. Meet Ghazi Algosaibi, 62, a poet and author, the Arab world’s leading envoy to London, who has recently earned not just a personal rebuke from Jack Straw, but the demands of the Jewish Board of Deputies that he be expelled from the country.

Mr Algosaibi recently wrote an ode to a suicide bomber (which prompted the rebuke). In the last two hours, in the lacquered mudZjar comfort of his Curzon Street embassy, he has been fluently denouncing the West. He has attacked cultural imperialism, bashed Bush, hammered Sharon, and now, as a coda to a virtuoso performance, he is giving a short tutorial in the virtues of lashing.