East Africa

 
The late Michael Meacher represented almost everything I loathe in a politician. Before his death in 2015, this veteran Labour MP was Jeremy Corbyn’s ardent fan. He had served under Wilson and Callaghan and he was so left-wing he earned the nickname Tony Benn’s ‘vicar on earth’. Yet when I compare Michael to most MPs in the Commons today — disgusting cowardly weathercocks — I remember with admiration that effete, parchment-white Englishman I saw standing about at Mogadishu’s wrecked airfield 27 years ago.