The Commons decided not to spend the Iraq statement flaying and nailing Tony Blair’s body to the floor of the House (an error, in this observer’s view).

However, Angus Robertson asked whether the Global Maniac should resign his position as Peace Envoy to the Middle East. Tobias Ellwood pointed out that before Blair, there was no Al Qaida in Iraq, and that he created “a vacuum of governance”. Jeremy Corbyn referred to his destruction of that country’s civil institutions. And a number of others expressed relief the Government wasn’t going to send the army in to effect a reconciliation between the sects, factions, death cults and End Times idiots that comprise the Middle Eastern polity.

Gently-spoken, mild-mannered Alistair Burt said governments over there didn’t appreciate what they were facing, and needed to “kill off the ideology and the people who are propagating it”. What, all of them? In the name of diversity, plurality and inclusive democracy?

The only forces that might actually overthrow the medievalists are theologians and feminists. As the latter have more guts than the former let’s send them in first.

Hague did hint that we had security advisers – in there, so trained ears discerned. I must have sneezed.

Jack Straw reminded the House that Iran had been coming round nicely until Bush’s Axis of Evil speech, and that they had tidied up their Taliban (via the Burt Solution). We can also remember Straw’s declaration at the height of Blair’s Luciferian powers that the idea of bombing Iran was “inconceivable”. It was that as much as anything as got him sacked.

Mike Gapes – whose white jacket was commented on at length by the jocose Speaker – testified on behalf of the Kurds saved by the western No-Fly zone, millions who wouldn’t be alive today if Saddam and Uday were in power. That is a fact that non-interventionists have to face. Or at least, ignore.

Hague said what was needed was “unity across the Arab world”.

The best and possibly only way of creating that would be western air strikes.