KFC heir attacks Brits

Kentucky Fried Chicken heir and New York resident Andrew Roberts has taken time out from his busy schedule to lambast the UK in a piece for the Mail. Roberts, a Blair adorer who said “for Churchill, apotheosis came in 1940; for Tony Blair, it will come when Iraq is successfully invaded and hundreds of weapons of mass destruction are unearthed from where they have been hidden by Saddam’s henchmen”, displays an equivalent quality of judgement on Syria.

“And nothing qualifies as worse oppression than having at least 1,429 innocents slaughtered – 400 of those children” writes Roberts, perhaps unaware that this is about the monthly total of innocent civilians killed by sectarian car bombs in Iraq for each month since Blair’s invasion, but perhaps Roberts doesn’t count dead Iraqis. 

Roberts rather disingenuously continues “The only people to have used this monstrous weapon since then have been Benito Mussolini against the Ethiopians in the 1930s, Adolf Hitler in his war against the Jews in the 1940s, and Saddam Hussein in his massacre of the Kurds in the 1980s. In each case Britain was in the van of nations that led to their downfall”, suggesting that in each case the use of poison gas played some part in  Britain’s motivation for war. It did not. In any of the three cases. Roberts goes on, after declaring the British to be a nation of moral relativists, to write “I seriously doubt whether, if the Argentinians invaded the Falklands tomorrow or Spain invaded Gibraltar, the British people would clamour for the military action needed to liberate either of those places.” demonstrating an ignorance of British public opinion so profound and so complete as to be worthy of a New York cab driver. 

All in all, Roberts’ piece is an embarrassing, cringe-making and simply bad piece of writing that aspires to polemic but lacks the Viagra needed to rise from the dull and prone. Perhaps he should have consulted a historian before submitting it.