‘The weakness and the cravenness of the Foreign Office does not inspire,’ claims Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg

All the worst elements of the BLOB, the British establishment at its most defeat, are encapsulated in the Foreign Office’s response to the brutal murder by Putin of Alexei Navalny.

The statement, made in the House of Commons this afternoon, was so wet that the Meteorological Office ought to have given it a storm name.

A brutal tyrant, murdered as if with his own hands, a brave, freedom-loving opposition leader.

And the Foreign Office said that it was acting at pace to explore all the options.

Even so, Humphrey Appleby of Yes Minister fame would have blanched at writing such inconsequential words in the face of so serious a threat.

There may not be much that the UK can do.

We are not the great empire that we once were.

What we can do, we should do, the Russian ambassador who still lives in splendour and state in the United Kingdom should be declared ‘persona non grata’ and expelled from the country.

Sanctions should be increased and tightened. A financial noose should be placed around the neck of the Russian economy to stop the lifeblood of cash from getting through to that.

If that means that we don’t get oil that has been processed in foreign countries and then re-exported as if it weren’t from Russia and that makes things a little bit more difficult, so be it.

Because the West faces a fundamental threat to its existence from Putin.

The war in Ukraine is an attack based on the world order, which has encouraged the mad mullahs in Iran, Kim Jong-Un, and may encourage China to act in a similarly aggressive and irresponsible way.

To counteract this, the West needs to be strong. It needs to show that it cannot be bullied, It needs to show backbone. Otherwise, we are all like George Bernard Shaw, a useful idiot to a tyrant.

He went to the Soviet Union in 1931 and met Stalin, whom he praised as a Georgian gentleman with no malice in him. He feasted whilst the Soviet Union starved and millions died.

As Putin similarly debauches parts of the Ukraine and kills his opponents, we need a strong political response and the UK has given the lead in supporting Ukraine in its fight. Boris Johnson was at the forefront of this.

But the weakness, the wetness, the cravenness of the Foreign Office does not inspire. You wonder what its purpose is.