One consequence of 24 hour news coverage is that there only ever appears to be enough time for one story.

We have lurched from relentless Labour leadership coverage to Refugee crisis. Seamlessly. The television news channels and their press siblings are presently acting as a de-facto conscience prodding our Political masters into action.

In the Political world, however, the name of the game is now inaction. Given the tragic-comedy scenario which our current leaders have inherited inaction might have been considered a good thing. Cerberus was a terrifying, mythical three-headed beast. Bush, Cheney and Blair were three very real, very monstrous heads acting as one hellhound. Masquerading as guard dogs they were marauding and salivating attack animals. Their bite marks are to be found everywhere.

After cynically manipulating the September 11 attacks as justification for the Iraq invasion Bush pronounced the Iraq conflict as “over” years ago. “Job done” he proclaimed. His hubris allowed him to believe he was directing the show. History has not yet had a chance to mock his naivety. The reason being it is not yet history. It is ongoing. A long, tortuous final act – still running it’s course with no end in sight.

Put aside WMD, Dr Kelly and claims of self-defence. When it became clear that another story needed to be concocted to assuage critics of the invasion the stance was altered. Regime change became a valid enough reason for invasion and deconstruction of a sovereign state. Saddam was a tyrannical and sadistic leader with a gang of family and army accomplices carrying out his tortuous whims.

Indeed, he was. We all knew that. We all had for many years. He was only one in a long line of evil men suppressing the people they proclaimed themselves to be defending.

The tragedy is that our actions – our stated good intentions – have been so appallingly misjudged, misrepresented, duplicitous, mismanaged and self-serving that the West is now the shameful villain in this performance. If there was anything funny it would be farce.

So much has changed. Twenty years ago we were moral. By “we” I mean the Western alliance. By Western alliance the British meant “Britain” and “America”. The British largely perceived the West as the USA being led by wise, old Auntie Britain. We were there to whisper in the ear of our unruly charge if it was acting like a petulant teenager.

Then a sickness seems to have set in. America was humiliated and it wanted revenge. It needed to seek justice. The people who died in New York truly deserved justice. What followed was less justice and more reckless retribution. And we were part of the posse. American policy got sick and we contracted whatever it was. They got chickenpox and we got shingles.

Bush and Blair began covering their tracks. They claimed to be encouraging a rise of democracy in the East. The charade continued in the form of support for the “Arab Spring” with money, weapons and endless talk of righteousness. I stand by the word charade. Not because the Arab people do not deserve democracy but because “we” misled them. Our democracy was hard won, bloody and horrifying. It took centuries. We appeared to offer a shortcut. We would hold out our hand and lead them to democratic and free societies.

What we see now is the lie. We will not even accept terrified, displaced families. We shall watch them scream, splutter, weep, crawl, climb and swim to get to our borders and then we shall say No. Britain in the 21st Century still looks down imperiously on foreigners and – ultimately – to Britain you are not a refugee. You are foreign and all that entails.

The shame we should feel is beyond description.

And once again we fall short. Our defence is that, really, the people should be safe at “home”. Safe in their bombed, burnt homes. No food. No water. Rape, murder, torture and death. Death from the air and the streets around them. Back there is where they should be – where it is home for them.

Our defence is implausible. “We” did not start the war in Syria. “We” did not start the Libyan conflict. “We” did promise protection and did not delver it. Having raised the hopes and the aspirations of millions of people and starting wars to show that we were righteous we walked away. We left them to get on with it.

“We” can argue in a court that “we” did not start these conflicts. That is disingenuous at best. A lot of intellectual energy has gone into avoiding responsibility. Politicians have become so adept at self-deceit that they claim the vicissitudes of their policies as intentional outcomes. The Bush and Blair era was bereft of integrity. We cannot avoid “doing our duty”. There is no hiding that it was the cinders of a fire started by Western intervention which set the neighbourhood alight. We set a blaze in a dry land full of kindling.

Now we refuse to help them out of the burning wrecks we helped create and it seems we are not even prepared to piss on the flames to help extinguish them.

I live in Britain. That is why I write “we”. I am complicit in this. These decisions are being made by politicians we elected in Britain. This is a democracy and so I, by association, share that shame.