We don't want to fight, but by Jingo...

Europe's talk of an EU army and boots on the ground in Ukraine is fantasy. It should throw its weight now behind a ceasefire

He wasn’t as naive as he looked.

One of the more amusing spectacles in the wake of JD Vance’s speech in Munich, giving Europe its marching orders over Ukraine, was the left-wing Guardian columnist, George Monbiot, on Question Time condemning all attempts at stopping the war as appeasement. He accused anyone so minded of being like “Chamberlain” at Munich in 1938 when the then UK Prime Minister promised “peace in our time” and sold out Czechoslovakia to the Nazis. “Never again,” he said, donning the mantle of Winston Churchill and condemning the peaceniks for their lack of stomach for the fight.

I mean, you and whose army, George? Are you going to personally lead a Greta Thunberg Storm Division to the Kursk front line? This sabre-rattling from people who have been leftists all their adult lives and who would have a nervous breakdown if they were asked to fire a gun is, well, extraordinary. As is the talk of a European army to take over the war from the US, now that it is undergoing one of its periodic retreats into Fortress America isolationism.

There is apparently to be an emergency summit of European leaders to see how this can be made to happen. One can imagine it now: Ursula von der Leyen toting a Kalashnikov and distributing hand grenades to Olaf Scholz and Emmanuel Macron. No pasaran! We don’t want to fight, but by jingo…