Great Britain?

I’M PREPARED to raise my titfer in the direction of Jeremy Hunt, our new foreign secretary, appointed in July after Boris Johnson resigned over the Brexit fiasco. At least he is trying to stand up for the right thing to do.

He has intervened with the foul dictatorship of Iran which has kept Iranian-born Mrs Nazanin ZaghariRatcliffe in jail for over two years on trumped-up charges while her husband and young daughter pine for her at home over here.

He intervened via our ambassador with the ruler of United Arab Emirates to secure the rapid return home of academic Matthew Hedges, sentenced only days ago to life in jail on trumpedup charges. Still on his white horse, he might shove some spine into his own Foreign Office, which is blocking our offering asylum to Mrs Asia Bibi, the Pakistani Christian who has spent eight years on Death Row for drinking from a tin cup that belonged to a Muslim fellow-worker. That is blasphemy for the insane fanatics who are a major force in Pakistan. Though she is now free at last she remains in hiding as the loonies try to hunt her down and hang her.

The fear is the mob might throw rocks at our High Commission in Islamabad. By the by top of the recipient list of our bloated foreign “aid” is Pakistan. Little wonder we are now mocked, derided, insulted and disregarded worldwide and especially in Brussels. We used to have a spine and the world knew it. Now we have mats so that our knees do not get dirty as we spend so much of our life on them.