There are times when the shamelessness of our government is breathtaking. For Gordon Brown to stand craving approval from the assembly that controls the World’s largest illegal arsenal of nuclear weapons, without mentioning that fact, is craven. To stand there and try to stoke populist support for war against Iran, because of its far less developed nuclear programme, is so gobsmacking in its hypocrisy that we must all struggle to find adequate words to condemn Brown. I am again deeply ashamed of my ex-FCO colleagues, who will have drafted this tendentious warmongering, that they know very well will be taken by Israeli hawks as a green light of British support for air strikes on Iran.

Doubtless Brown’s speech of strong support for Israel will have achieved progress in reducing the Labour Party’s £23 million debt. A war on Iran will be a distraction from the effects of the judderings of an unregulated financial system by which there is 1,800 times more “Virtual money” moved than money linked to actual trade in goods and services.

Last year I read Hilda Reilly’s Prickly Pears of Palestine. While I know intellectually of the terrible sufferings of the Palestinians, this work of great empathy brought home how it feels to be a Palestinian facing these levels of oppression. Brown reportedly said that Britain stood beside Israel in “The fight for liberty”. Liberty and Israel do not belong in the same sentence.