By all means wring your hands over Syria. Just don’t ask me to trust you

They’re getting the rebuttals in early, have you noticed that? You might call them a pre-emptive strikes. Here’s William Hague, speaking to BBC Radio 4 about those chemical attacks in Syria…

‘To believe that anybody else had done it, you would have to believe that the opposition in Syria would use, on a large scale, weapons that we have no evidence that they have, delivered by artillery or air power that they do not possess, killing hundreds of people in areas already under their control.’

Pretty good, that. He must have practised it beforehand. ‘Have’ and ‘possess’ mean the same thing, after all, so you need a bit of preparation there. Better, certainly, than John Kerry, who gave a press conference at the White House and said…

‘Anyone who could claim that an attack of this staggering scale could be contrived or fabricated needs to check their conscience and their own moral compass.’