AMONG the scarecrow element of the British right there is a genuine belief that we hold ourselves accountable to a higher set of moral values. Other states might have been favoured with parts of the truth and some of these peoples may even possess attributes it’s possible for us to admire. None of them, though, have been blessed with, you know, the full English breakfast.

Indeed Margaret Thatcher, the patron saint of Tories everywhere, often went to heroic lengths to overlook some mild character deficiencies in her favourite geo-political chums and allies. General Augusto Pinochet, Chile’s psychopathic dictator, enjoyed dropping his political opponents from helicopters at great height into rivers and sent army death squads around the country to torture and murder thousands of his own people after they had voted for the wrong kind of government in a democratic election. But, hey, he managed to reduce Chile’s rate of inflation. Mrs Thatcher preferred to dwell on his cuddly side and once described him as “this country’s staunch, true friend”. It was a condign lesson from the Iron Lady about the iniquities of rushing to judgment and God bless her for it.

Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, often adopted a similarly benevolent attitude when choosing her house-guests. Why, Elizabeth even had old Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife for tea at Buckingham Palace even as his private army of government thugs, the Securitate was brutalising tens of thousands of Romanians back home. Royal-friendly historians have since tried to spare Her Majesty’s embarrassment with a yarn about her hiding behind a bush to avoid meeting the Romanian dictator but she always seemed happy enough in pictures of them sitting beside each other in that nice, horse-drawn carriage we gifted her.

One of Britain’s closest allies in the Middle East is Saudi Arabia, a gangster state operated by the House of Saud for the sole purpose of enriching itself and its sprawling network of fluffers and lickspittles. This family of oil-anointed cut-throats routinely permits women to be tortured and sexually harassed for displeasing men. Britain itself isn’t averse to a bit of mafiosi behaviour in this region and for decades has been dipping its beak in the profits from dealing with the Saudi Corleones. The UK has sold more than £1bn worth of British-manufactured missiles and bombs to the Saudi regime. These are primarily for use in Yemen in an obscene and dirty conflict that has killed thousands of innocents and seen millions displaced as the Saudi-led coalition has targeted civilian areas. Britain has always insisted its dealings with the Saudis are legitimate but was recently forced to reveal that it’s been flogging lethal military hardware to them under a shadowy type of licence for the export of “less sensitive goods”.

ALISON ROWAT: There are victims here, but they are not the IS brides

Last year the UK almost doubled the value of arms sales to countries on the government’s list of human rights abusers, according to figures compiled by the Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT). Last week it attempted to pressure Germany to ease its recently imposed arms embargo to the Saudis, arguing that it might undermine the profits of arms manufacturers and adversely affect the European economy. It seems that the spirit of the Opium Wars and the old East India Company continues to influence our foreign policy. Germany elected to halt arms sales to the Saudis on human rights grounds and in the wake of the brutal slaying of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey’s Saudi Arabia embassy.

In this grown-up world we live in though, it doesn’t pay to get all censorious about alliances born out of political expediency: anything to keep the peace and oil the wheels of commerce, old chap. It’s just that, well, some politicians and commentators in this country obviously feel that while it’s fine for Prime Ministers and the royal family to give succour to international brigands it’s a different matter when it comes to Shamima Begum, a vulnerable young British citizen who, as a child, made a wrong turning in her life.

Ms Begum is the black-clad ‘Isis bride’ who has broken cover to inflame the sanctimonious passions of a braying lynch-mob extolling British or Western values. The air is thick with the smoke of their burning crosses. Ms Begum is now 19 and has given birth to her third child. She departed Britain four years ago to support the Isis Caliphate in Syria but she now wants to return home to England to bring up her child. The English police authorities have already apologised to her parents for failing to warn them that their much-loved daughter could become prey to the sophisticated, online, propaganda techniques of Isis. She was groomed at a vulnerable time in her young life before travelling to Syria to be offered as a sex slave to a man almost double her age and gave birth to two other children. She then watched them die amidst a kaleidoscope of images that no human being, let alone an emotionally immature teenager, should ever witness.

The response of ‘civilised’ and ‘decent’ Britain to her plea to be allowed to come home has been a cruel one. The usual suspects are all shouting “Kill the Witch”, drunk on the vengeful fervour of Brexit which will see bloodshed on our nation’s streets. It’s a reactionary and shaven-headed philosophy which seeks easy scapegoats in asserting its moral superiority.

The Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, who, with every utterance seems to epitomise the moral vacuum at the heart of his pitiless Government, has thrown this young woman to the mob by seeking to revoke her UK citizenship. He and a wretched cast of Alf Garnetts cite her interview by an experienced British journalist where, hesitantly, she appears not to show sufficient remorse for her bad choices. They know nothing of the context of her continuing captivity or the psychological damage to her impressionable young mind. And how could they know? Their own minds have been distorted by the propaganda of centuries of British imperialism; what passes for their brains is programmed to forget the squalid little wars and vicious deeds which fed it.

If they truly believe in Britain’s superior sense of decency then let them demonstrate it by bringing this traumatised young woman home and showing her a better way.