How lucky we are, during the ongoing crisis with the eschatological fruit-loops currently dominant in the Iranian government to have in place an incompetent intellectual midget in Margaret Beckett, who has been repeatedly shown to be nowhere near up to the task of dealing with the role of foreign secretary, and who has demonstrated an inability to speak on anything but domestic political matters.
As a bonus, we have a placeholding nobody in Des Browne in place at Defence, whose role is granted as a result of his his loyalties in Labour's inter-nicene struggle.
Britain has a strong and simple case over the Iranians' piracy and kidnapping, and are dealing with an administration that is anything but monolithic. In moments of dark hilarity, the Iranians even bungled their attempts to make up a location inside their own waters. And they did so not once but twice. But a largely sympathetic United Nations has been so mishandled that we can't even get a decent resolution in our favour. It is truly dismal when one considers that Jack Straw would have handled the situation better.