Mark Andrews: Greta spreads the joy in the Middle East, Lammy's futile gesture, and why banning the burka is not very British

Imagine being one of the displaced people of Gaza. You have been forced to move probably two or three times. Your home has been flattened, you have lost everything you own. Aid supplies are sporadic, to say the least, and there is the constant fear of an air raid. 

How much more frightening and miserable can life get? 

And then Greta Thunberg turns up with a camera crew in tow....

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On being detained by Israeli forces, Greta and her friends were invited to watch footage of the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7, 2023.

She and her friends patiently watched harrowing footage of hundreds of young people detained at gunpoint, many of them killed, and had a lively and thought-provoking debate with the Israeli authorities about whether blasting thousands of innocent civilians out of their homes would effectively redress the balance. 

Actually, I made that bit up. She refused point blank to see or listen to anything that might contaminate her simplistic world view, and told the media she had been kidnapped. 

I know bigotry's all the rage these days, but wouldn't you like to think somebody as enlightened as Greta would want to buck the trend, and demonstrate the importance of understanding other people and listening to other points of view?

Because if that is how the urban sophisticates of supposedly liberal Scandinavia conduct themselves, is it any wonder that the world feels like a tinderbox at the moment.

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In a 1963 comedy revue called Beyond the Fringe, an RAF officer played by Peter Cook orders one of his underlings to go on a suicide mission.

"We need a futile gesture at this stage," he says.

I wonder if that is where David Lammy got the idea for his decision to sanction two members of the Israeli cabinet.  

To put this into context, the sanctions mean that Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich will not be allowed to visit the UK, any assets they hold in the country will be frozen - there's no suggestion that they have any - and they will not be allowed to serve as company directors in the UK. Something tells me these hard men won't be losing too much sleep over this. 

It is often said that the art of diplomacy is to present an iron fist in a velvet glove, to demonstrate strong resolve without causing unnecessary antagonism. Remarkably, Mr Lammy appears to have achieved the opposite - he's got the Israeli's backs up, without actually landing a single blow.

It's right up there with handing a strategically important British territory to a not-particularly-friendly foreign power, and then agreeing to hand them £101 billion so we can keep using the military base.

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It looks like the row about the burka is back on the agenda again, with the Prime Minister responding to new Reform MP Sarah Pochin's call for a ban in his usual, decisive manner: "Um ah, ha ha, I'm not going to follow her down that line."

Not a great response, certainly, but wasn't it also a rather silly question? Think, after all the effort you've put in to winning a by-election seat against the odds, is that really the most important thing you could think of asking?

I dislike the burka, and there are certainly circumstances when I think wearing one is inappropriate. But the same can be said about a lot of items of clothing. 

I'm not sure that it would be socially acceptable, for example, to turn out for a funeral dressed in flip-flops and a 'Stuff the Poll Tax' T-shirt. But I wouldn't advocate a new law banning it.

Telling people what they can't wear isn't very, well, British. In fact it sounds a bit Iranian.