Western Liberals Shocked As Powderkeg Goes Bang

Please, chaps, just have a nice cup of herbal tea and chill

To the utter dismay of millions of nice people in the West, for whom live coverage of the Egyptian protests has supplanted More4 as their preferred evening viewing, mass outbreaks of naughtiness are now in their second day, with no visible signs of niceness breaking out anywhere in Cairo’s Tahrir Square.

“Never in my worst nightmares could I have imagined that the suspension of law and order could possibly result in outbursts of lawlessness and disorder,” gasped one horrified viewer, as naughty Egyptian supporters of the government hurled stones at its nice opponents, who inexplicably succumbed to naughtiness and threw them back. “Why can’t the army rustle up some tea and biscuits, and sit the two factions down to agree some sort of common ground like sensible grown-ups - preferably involving the immediate departure of the hated Mubarak, who I couldn’t have picked out of a line-up two weeks ago but now realise is the most evil man in the world?”

“Whoever would have thought that, with the mechanism of state paralysed, such unpleasant acts of violence could go unpunished in the ensuing power vacuum?” agreed an ashen-faced Guardian reader. “The army should step in and take immediate action against these evil hired thugs.”

So far, however, the liberal intelligentsia of the West have not specified whether they would prefer the Egyptian tanks to fire explosive armour-piercing shells at anyone clutching a rock, or simply grind them to a bloody pulp under their tracks.

Neither has anyone yet decided how far petrol prices will have to skyrocket before they start to wonder if perhaps their own wicked governments might not have had the right idea all along in backing stability over democracy in the Middle East.