Mr Powell’s ‘talking cure’

I’m beginning to wonder where I can go this summer to get away from Jonathan Powell. Suddenly Tony Blair’s curly-haired former chief of staff is everywhere, bursting out of newspapers and Radio 4 programmes, relentlessly repeating the message that it’s good to talk to terrorists. Or, to be more specific, that it was jolly good to talk to Messrs Adams and McGuinness of the IRA — which he and Tony did during the heady days of the Northern Ireland ‘peace process’ — and that now he thinks it would also be good to talk to the Taleban one day, and even perhaps Osama bin Laden himself. One is tempted to think that if Beelzebub were to make an impromptu appearance on earth, the first thing he would see would be Jonathan Powell walking purposefully towards him, clearing his throat for a chat.

Mr Powell recently observed, in the Guardian, that ‘there seems to be a pattern to the West’s behaviour when we face terrorist campaigns.