Desperate state

The latest video from Isis introduces a new British executioner, a successor to ‘Jihadi John’, and it is a classic of the genre: bombastic, pompous, ridiculous yet terrifying. ‘O slave of the White House, O mule of the Jews,’ says a man in a ski mask, addressing David Cameron, ‘how strange it is that the leader of a small island threatens us with a handful of planes. Only an imbecile would dare to wage war against a land where the law of Allah reigns supreme.’ He has a cold, arrogant look in his eyes and brandishes a pistol held sideways, aping American ‘gangsta style’. Kneeling before him are five men in orange jumpsuits identified as ‘British spies’. In fact they may just be Syrian journalists whose ‘crime’ was simply trying to do honest reporting about the so-called Islamic State. I have a sickening feeling that one of them supplied pictures I used in a piece for the BBC when I was on the Syrian border last year.