Sir: In last week's Spectator Simon Jenkins laments the lack
of foreign intervention in the forthcoming bloody and potentially destabilising civil war in Yemen. Clearly Simon Jenkins is not aware of the Foreign Office's lour-stage strategy', as espoused in the episode of Yes, Prime Minister entitled 'A victory for democracy' (coincidentally about a fictitious country called East Yemen!). Stage 1: The Foreign Office says that nothing is going to happen. Stage 2: The Foreign Office says that something may be going to happen but Britain should do nothing about it. Stage 3: The Foreign Office says that Britain should do some- thing about the situation, but there is noth- ing that Britain could do. Stage 4: The For- eign Office says that Britain should have done something, but it is too late now.
I would estimate that we are now some- where between Stages 2 and 3.
Mark Gray
29 Waverley Road, Exinouth, Devon
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