Sir Stephen Wall, a former top foreign policy adviser to Tony Blair, writing in the New Statesman:

There are times, such as the past two weeks, when a British prime minister should have been thinking less about private influence and more about public advocacy. Could the Prime Minister really not speak up for the simple proposition that the slaughter of innocent people in Lebanon, the destruction of their country and the ruin of half a million lives were wrong and should stop immediately? "What kind of ceasefire?" Blair asks. One that stopped the horror, even for 24 hours, would be a start.