Jobs for the enemy
With their power to nominate candidates to become the UK’s new judge in Strasbourg, ministers had the chance to bring a voice of sanity to the European Court of Human Rights. They blew it.

For their successful nominee turns out to be a lifelong Eurocrat, steeped in the meddling traditions of the court.

Big Brother’s Peter ‘the sewer’ Bazalgette at the Arts Council… Labour’s Ed Richards front-runner for the BBC… Now Paul Mahoney gets the ECHR.

Britain is a Conservative-dominated country. So why, in the name of political sanity, is Mr Cameron allowing all the influential jobs to go to the enemy?

Meanwhile, in Libya — despite Britain and France’s intervention — Islamist militias now rule the streets. The country is at serious risk of being torn apart along tribal and regional lines.
Just last week, more than 100 people were killed in clashes between rival tribes in Libya’s south, and a band of armed Islamists occupied the capital’s airport in protest at the arrest of one of their members. The Libyan transitional government exists only in name.

The terrifying reality is that we are seeing once secular, tolerant cultures being dragged back to the Middle Ages — and with the implicit blessing of the West. Indeed, Saudi Arabia’s continued status as a vital Western ally holds up a mirror to the rank hypocrisy of the pro-democracy rhetoric we hear from the likes of Barack Obama and David Cameron.