A little family dispute on the Times's letters page

Some families have their political rows around the family dinner table, some save them up for Christmas Day – and others do it in a far more public manner.

Sir Tony Brenton, Britain’s former ambassador to Russia, had a letter published in the Times on Thursday supporting a controversial column earlier in the week in which Matthew Parris, the former Conservative MP turned increasingly erratic writer, suggested Ukraine should be prepared to cede territory to Russia and agree never to join Nato in order to stop the war.

Brenton, describing Parris as “right”, wrote that “neither side can expect to achieve total victory for at least the next two years, and probably considerably longer” and called on both “to retreat from their non-negotiable demands”.

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“For Ukraine it means its demand for Nato membership,” wrote Brenton, Britain’s man in Moscow from 2004 to 2008. “All credit to the US for working towards such an outcome. And shame on the Europeans (including the UK) for their refusal to contemplate any compromise at all, and indeed to enter into any sort of discussion with the Russians (whose agreement will plainly be necessary).”

This earned a rebuke in the following day’s Times letter page from a lawyer who noted that Brenton was “deputy head of mission at the British embassy in Washington at the outset of the Afghanistan war and chargé d’affaires at the time of the invasion of Iraq”.

“What happened to ‘we do not negotiate with terrorists?’,” questioned Jennifer Brenton, a barrister at 33 Bedford Row Chambers and, er… daughter of Sir Tony Brenton.