Political column - June 21

An entire nation is being held hostage. The ransom being negotiated is running into billions and will involve the captive submitting to worldwide humiliation.

For sheer audacity, you have to admire the perpetrators, a European gang based in Brussels.

Individually, they are mostly small-time operators. Put them together, and they think they can do anything. To anybody.

Should the UK really be attempting a dash for freedom? Some would say it would be brave. Some would say it would be foolhardy, an act of great recklessness which would risk harming the hostage and others besides.

Cabinet meetings have been held to discuss the dilemma against a backdrop of inconvenient public opinion which is in favour of an escape attempt being made, albeit not be a great margin.

But the public is just too stupid to understand what is at stake. Only MPs and the Lords have the levels of wisdom which is required in handling this most delicate and dangerous matter.

That's why there have been regular meetings at Westminster of the Cobra committee - that's the Commons Operation for Brexit Reversal Action.

David Davis, who is a former SAS member (part time), has been appointed to draw up the rescue plans, but his schemes have caused a lot of tut-tutting and shaking of heads. It's touch and go whether he will be able to keep his job.

It had all started on friendly terms with smiles and hugs. It was only when the UK said: "I would like to leave now" that things started to get nasty.

"We'll all still be friends, won't we?" Britain said as it eyed the exit door.

"Not so fast," said one of the ringleaders of the gang, Michel Barnier. "There are some matters to settle first. You have to be taught a lesson."

There were, he explained, the two ps - payment, and punishment. The more of the first, the less of the second, although he would make sure there was still plenty enough of the second to hurt.

"You have to be taught a lesson," he repeated.

Behind the frightening Barnier's back, others had been giving reassuring embraces and saying: "Are you really sure you want to leave? You can always change your mind."

This approach has worked with others in the gang who have got cold feet from time to time.

The ransom negotiations have been complicated by the onset of Stockholm syndrome, the psychological condition in which some hostages start falling in love with their captors.

Indeed, there is a disagreement over whether the United Kingdom is actually a hostage at all.

They are nice people really, say many people about the captors, who spend their time bickering among themselves and in the normal course of events couldn't even agree on the time.

They are all agreed however on bashing Britain.

To find out how it happened, we have to go back many years. There was a man called Edward Heath who groomed and guided the nation by the hand into their clutches. "There will be no loss of sovereignty," he said with a straight face.

Reassured, the nation went willingly into the arrangement which seemed to mutual benefit. Everybody said it was. The more people began to wonder, the more they insisted. Are you stupid or something?

Meanwhile Jeremy Corbyn, Emily Thornberry, and Sir Keir Starmer, have hesitated in backing rescue attempts.

What, they have mused, is in it for us?

Apart from the fact that if it all goes messily wrong it will bring down the Government. And that means a general election. And that means Labour getting another stab of getting into power.

There is another option. That is to give up and be part of the gang. Being in a gang gives safety in numbers.

Look at this way. The United Kingdom is not really a hostage if it is happy to stay, is it?

And let's face it, all this loose talk about breaking free has just caused a lot of upset and bother.