One can only hope that whoever was responsible had the decency to say "Whoops!" Employed to protect Tony Blair on a peace mission to the Middle East, one of his minders was about to board a plane from Tel Aviv's Ben-Gurion airport, so decided to take the bullets out of their gun. You know, to be safe.
Unfortunately, the minder must have accidentally pulled the trigger because there was a loud bang and a bullet shattered on the ground. Pandemonium ensued, and the Israeli Airports Authority has launched an inquiry. On the faux-pas scale, it is quite high.
But then ever since he left office, Blair's security team have been working hard to earn themselves a reputation as world-class blunderers. In September last year, the former prime minister's new reinforced BMW had to be returned to the factory in Munich after four asylum seekers jumped out of its container on arrival in London. This was followed in May by a slight mid-air misunderstanding with the Israeli air force, who did not receive the proper identification from Blair's private jet after it entered Israel's airspace. Two fighters were scrambled, and reportedly came within seconds of shooting the plane down. A "technical error" was blamed.
Then, in September, a senior firearms officer had to be removed from operational duties when it emerged that, caught short on London's Edgware Road, she had popped into the toilet of a nearby Starbucks and left her gun behind. The alarm was raised 20 minutes later when a customer found a loaded Glock 17 semi-automatic pistol in the cubicle.
Whether Blair is losing sleep over all this, one can only imagine. But he might like to hear one consoling thought in mind: if this is what his security is like, and he is still alive, then his enemies cannot be all that brilliant either.
