Johnson: We need Russian permission before we can help Syria

If ever we needed proof of the abject powerlessness of national governments - our government - in the face of international crises, it was today's Commons debate on the appalling humanitarian crisis in Aleppo and Syria.

Speaker after speaker, from both sides of the House, spoke of their horror at the killing of children and civilians in the proud ancient city by Assad's forces who are backed by Putin's Russia and Iran.

Almost all uttered various versions of "something must be done" and "we cannot stand idly by".

Some, notably the former Chancellor George Obsorne and the Labour MP John Woodcock, bitterly regretted the failure of the West to intervene at various more auspicious moments over the past few years.

Woodcock in particular savaged the former Labour leader Ed Miliband for corralling Labour MPs into voting against air strikes in 2013: "The slaughter shames us all", said Woodcock.

But when it came to the only moment in the debate that mattered, the statement by the foreign secretary Boris Johnson, it turned out that we have no present plan even to give humanitarian aid to the starving and desperate in that shell of a city.

Johnson said that the UK has studied the practicalities of providing food and medicines, and it cannot be done without endangering the lives of British pilots.

Unless that is, Russia gives us permission.

So everything, as Johnson said, depends on President Putin acquiring a sense of shame about the catastrophe in Syria, and - against all the evidence of our eyes - deciding to distance himself from the tyrant Assad.

So the UK will be a tainted, implicated bystander for some time yet.