Expressing disagreement with the public statements of the grieving families of fallen soldiers is a tricky business, but Dalrymple does so here in the Social Affairs Unit, holding his nose and defending Gordon Brown in the process:

No one, I think, would take me for an admirer of Gordon Brown, much less an apologist for him; but in the matter of the letter that he wrote to Mrs Janes, mother of the soldier killed in Afghanistan, I feel sorry for him. He has become a victim of the ideological sentimentality so assiduously promoted by his odious predecessor, and now so fully a part of our national character.