THE old saw has it that the first casualty of war is the truth, and tensions abroad all too often lead to crackdowns on civil liberties at home.

The disastrous consequences of right-wing policy are never acknowledged on the right. We’ve all seen the logic — if Labour loses an election it’s because it wasn’t right-wing enough, even if shifts right produce worse and worse results over time, as they did from 1997-2015.

The same logic applies to war. Twenty years of Britain and the US breaking international law to attack other countries, 30 years of Nato’s eastward expansion and massive military exercises on Russia’s borders are the policies which preceded Russia’s appalling invasion of Ukraine this week. But the warmongers at Westminster will not admit these policies might be at fault.