Tom Peck's Sketch: Polonium may be terrifying, but was Alexander Litvinenko's murder really terrorism?

Given it’s been almost 10 years since the last British person dared drink a cup of tea, the war is already lost

Theresa May addresses the House of Commons (PA)

There was a sharp intake of breath, and after that came disbelief. “The operation to kill Mr Litvinenko was probably approved by President Putin,” revealed the Home Secretary, Theresa May, and suddenly there could be no doubt that everything that everyone had already known for the past 10 years was, in fact, true.

The shadow Home Secretary was, quite rightly, outraged. “This was an unparalleled act of state-sponsored terrorism,” Andy Burnham declared.

And he’s right. Be afraid. If the Russian President could order the assassination of a defector working as an informant for the secret services of a hostile power, using an untraceable radioactive poison in order to prevent it ever being known, he could do it to you too.

This is exactly how terrorism works. Isis does it all the time. Identify a specific target, ideally one who is actively engaged in exposing your connections to organised crime, murder them using a method specifically chosen to make it look like natural causes, and the rest of us will suddenly be too scared to leave the house.

The Lib Dems’ Tom Brake was just as outraged about “a British citizen murdered on British soil in a nuclear attack”. It’s possible he does actually believe that the atomic matter in the green tea Mr Litvinenko drank in the bar of the Millennium Hotel somehow achieved nuclear fission and exploded inside him with devastating effect, rather than merely being radioactive.

It would also provide a solution to Jeremy Corbyn’s pressing problem of just what to put on the end of his non-nuclear nuclear missiles. Royal Navy submarines patrolling the depths with the capability of firing cups of tea would be both cost-effective and a fitting final British contribution to a post-nuclear holocaust planet.

The murder, Ms May made clear, would not be tolerated. And “every effort” would be made to bring the two murderers to justice, even if one of them has been an elected member of the Russian parliament for the past eight years.

“We will be summoning the Russian ambassador in London to the Foreign Office, where we will express our profound displeasure at Russia’s failure to co-operate and provide satisfactory answers,” she said, a course of action every bit as drastic as the “angry letter” sent by Hans Blix to Kim Jong-il in Team America: World Police.

Labour’s Clive Efford suggested an England boycott of the 2018 World Cup, a brave if presumptuous call to arms before the qualifying rounds have even begun.

What other course of action is there? Given it’s been almost 10 years since the last British person dared drink a cup of tea, the war is already lost.