The crises in Pakistan and Kenya have elicited a wave of criticism about Britain’s relations with its former colonies, and, indeed, of its self-regardingly rosy account of the heritage it left them. That is often richly deserved. But it should not obscure the central lesson about relations between the west and Central Asia, the Middle East and much of Africa: that support for autocracy and indulgence of corruption in these regions, far from encouraging stability, breed extremism and, in extremis, failed states.

While that should by now be perfectly obvious, it is dismayingly apparent that western leaders do not seem capable of translating it into policy. Take Pakistan.