UK won't recognise unilaterally declared state?

Putting aside the fact that the two-state solution is less viable now than airborne pigs, Alistair Burt's comments that Britain won't 'recognize a [Palestinian] state that does not have a capital, and doesn’t have borders' is absurd.

For a start, one doesn't fail to recognise Eritrea because it has a border dispute with Ethiopia. Statehood and final status are different things. Burt's comments are even more preposterous in the light of Israel's own failure to define its borders, while the UK effectively recognises Tel Aviv as Israel's capital, in denial of its claims to Jerusalem. One should assume that, according to Burt's logic, Israel shouldn't be recognised as a state.

Of course, all of this ignores the facts on the ground. What kind of state would Salam Fayyad be declaring? Would residents of the West Bank settlements accept residency of Palestine? Would Palestine have control of its own borders, roads and natural resources? Would they control tourism on the Dead Sea? If not, then you can call it a state or, in the words of one 1990s Israeli government hawk, 'fried chicken', it's no real change.

If the international community genuinely wants to see a two state solution work, negotiated or unilaterally declared, then it will involve material support for a potentially bloody transition, and there doesn't seem to be any enthusiasm for that.