The attempted murder of the Russian double agent Sergei Skripal – once seen as a prize catch by MI6, but regarded by the Russians as being in the same category as such traitors  as Kim Philby or Guy Burgess – was a political affair from the beginning. Skripal’s daughter, Yulia, is also critically ill, and a police officer remains in a serious condition. Grave though the attack was, the hyperbole has been striking. Ten days ago, Sir Alan Duncan, the Foreign Office minister, told BBC Radio 4’s World at One that it was “the most dastardly heinous act we’ve seen on European soil since 1945”.