The Government have made a deft, swift and successful power-play to send in armed aircraft and special forces personnel to rescue Britons from the more remote parts of Libya.

The planning that will have gone into pulling off this one must have been first-class.

Well done MOD/FCO and everyone involved. All in all, given conditions and constraints in Tunisia then Egypt and Libya, a superb couple of weeks for British consular emergency planning and execution. On to the next one!

But … a lurking unease remains.

Did they formally ask permission from the Libyan authorities?

If not, was not the brazen and, er, utterly unwarranted illegal violation of Libyan airspace by our soldiers a Bushhitler/Blairite war crime of horrendous proportions?