If I were flying from one closely-allied country to another, and it became clear that the security mavens of the second country had decided to force our plane to turn back to the first country on the ground that one of the passengers might be a bit dodgy, I’d be very annoyed.

Either (and probably, given the historic record), the relevant guy isn’t a terrorist and I’m losing a day of my business trip or holiday for no reason – or he is, and rather than actually helping the people on the plane, the authorities would be making us more likely to end up dead. And even assuming that the terrorists have decided to repeat 9/11, but using a fuel-empty plane flying from the second-securest major airport in the world [*], all that this latest American (for it is they) decision would ensure is that London would be hit instead of New York.

Remind me why we send our troops to die in their fuckwit wars again? Oh, that’s right – it’s so that when they imprison innocent Brits on made-up terror charges they get released after three years of torture, instead of being held forever. Cheers, mates.

[*] Tel Aviv is the securest. Somehow this isn’t massively reassuring.