DEEP in the bowels of 11 Downing Street, the Chancellor and Defence Secretary are burning the midnight oil, trying to make the costs of the Syrian bombing more palatable to the gullible public.
Through the dividing wall in No 10 strange sounds can be heard.
“Neeeeyowwww, daga-daga-daga…”
Fallon: “What was that?”
Osborne: “Oh, that’s just Dave.”
F: “Ah yes, his youngsters in high spirits no doubt.”
O: “No, I mean THAT’S Dave.”
“doo-doo-doo-de-da-doo-doo…”
F: “Is that the tune from The Dam Busters?”
O: “You should have heard what he wanted to call this dog he saw the other day.”
F: “How long has this been going on?”
O: “Since you had the bloody stupid idea of telling him that the RAF had a spare plane kicking around with his name on it.”
F: “Aaah.”
O: “Oh and then when you got him all excited with your sabre-rattling and told him it was what Maggie would have done.”
F: “Hmmm.”
On the Chancellor’s desk the internal phone begins to ring. Reluctantly he answers.
Cameron: “I say Algie, where’s ginger? We need to take this kite up.”
O: “For God’s sake, Dave. For the last time my name is George not Algie, you’re not Biggles and we haven’t had any gingers around here since we shafted those Lib Dem morons.”
C: “Enough chatter, Algie. Loose talk costs lives and all that. It’s time we got up there in the old Sopwith Camel and taught these chappies what’s what.
“Let’s give the Bosch a good hiding what, chaps? Let’s get up there and give the Red Devils a taste of plucky British steel.”
O: “Er, Dave, the Red Devils are actually on our side.”
C: “Really?”
O: “Yes, I think you may have meant the Red Baron, he was German.”
C: “This is all jolly confusing Algie, which side is a chap on?”
O: “That’s what everyone else wants to know.”
He hangs up and turns to Fallon with a resigned look.
O: “I told them giving him that complete set of WE Johns books and a DVD of war movies was a bad idea. He’s going to be 10 times worse now after the Commons vote.
“What did you want anyway?”
F: “Er, £100 billion for Trident.”
O: “For God’s sake, can’t you see I’m busy? Thanks to you I’ve got to pretend to balance a budget AND fund a war. It’s a good job I don’t really care.”
There is the faint noise of someone knocking at the door and then the phone rings again.
O: “What now!? Yes? Oh, security, hello. What’s the problem? Not a terrorist attack I hope, ha ha! Just my little joke.
“I see, I see … well you know what to do.”
F: “Problem, George?”
O: “That was security. Apparently Hilary Benn has just turned up wearing a World War II fighter pilot’s helmet and what looks like a Tony Blair mask.”
F: “What does he want?”
O: “To know if Dave’s coming out to play, apparently.”

Well they went and did it again. And, sadly there was never really any doubt as to the outcome as a significant number of Blairite chancers cravenly crossed the floor to vote with the Tories on the latest tawdry episode of mass slaughter in the name of imperialist adventurism.

And with sickening predictability no sooner had the vote been announced than the bombs began falling quicker than the smile on a Donegal priest’s face when he realises his access-all-areas Boyzone ticket is not what he hoped it would be.

The quisling-in-chief was of course shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn, who delivered a braying tub-thumping performance which was praised to the rafters by the media despite being memorable only for the mendacity of his arguments and his flagrant manipulation of historical fact.

Now who does that remind you of?

Yup, it’s 2003 all over again, folks, and they don’t give a damn.

Benn disgracefully exploited the memory of the International Brigades and their heroically doomed fight against Franco in a cynical bid to sell the case for war, boasting that Labour had always supported those who stood up against fascism.

Three points here. First, when the brave volunteers went to fight in Spain in 1936 Labour initially did not support them, regarding them as extremists and communists despite the fact that they came from many walks of life and diverse political backgrounds.

It was not until the tail end of 1937 that Labour reversed its stance.

Second, the International Brigaders did what they did in defiance of their governments, who were quiet happy to sit back and let Franco get on with things with the support of Hitler and Mussolini, in a shameful stance which in many ways paved the way for WWII.

Many of the surviving volunteers were excommunicated, vilified and many were interned on their arrival back home.

They did not toady up to the powers that be in an attempt to make their lives easier at the expense of those of countless others.

Third, comparing Isis to Hitler, Franco et al is the kind of specious lazy rhetoric we have heard applied ad nauseam down the centuries.

Isis are bigoted murdering bastards but they are not “fascists.”

What they want to do is build a brutally repressive theocracy that will suppress all opposition. The glaringly obvious comparison is not 1930s Europe but Saudi Arabia, which incidentally is Isis’s principal bankroller.

But we’re not allowed to mention that are we…?

Still, on the plus side we have been helpfully informed that Cameron’s swanky new ministerial plane is equipped with 159 seats.

That means it should only take two trips to round up all the warmongers and deliver them to The Hague.