Just as David Cameron’s grip on domestic policy is spattered with the smears of countless U-turns, the Government’s foreign policy has been exposed by its fumblings in the deserts of the Middle East. There is something about the uprisings across North Africa which Mr Cameron just does not get; principally the need to avoid acting like some neo-imperial power. His instinct – and that of his Foreign Secretary William Hague – appears zealously to emulate that of his predecessor Tony Blair when it comes to gung-ho militarism. The fiasco which saw eight special services personnel and diplomats rounded up in the middle of the night after landing James Bond style in a helicopter to make contact with Libyan opposition leaders was fortunate only in that it ended in farce rather than tragedy. Moreover, the sanctioning of the cloak-and-dagger mission glaringly revealed the fact that Mr Cameron and his Government have badly misjudged the mood in Libya and the Arab nations. As the humiliating departure of the special services mission showed, the Libyan rebels (for want of a better word) are determined to be in charge of their own destiny, that this is their fight and theirs alone. If it is to involve any other countries it should be through the United Nations and not unilateral acts of force – including the implementation of any no-fly zones. Here again, Mr Cameron was off to a false start with what US Defence Secretary Robert Gates dubbed “loose talk” while pointing out the elemental truth that the policing of any no-fly zone must start with a military strike against air defences and capabilities.
The integrity of the Libyan uprising, like the Egyptias and the Tunisian ones, lies in their just claim that the oppositionists represent the voice of the people or, as one newspaper commented, “the struggle is about ending tyranny rather than searching for new masters”. The Libyans, Egyptians and Tunisians do not want, and have not yet sought, foreign intervention. They have sufficient experience of this in the form of the arms they have faced in the hands of the autocracies to whom Britain and the West sold them. Nothing crystalises Mr Cameron’s lack of understanding of the region and the events that have engulfed it more than his determination to be the first world leader to visit Tahrir Square in Egypt while on a tour accompanied by arms salesmen.
The Prime Minister appears out of step with Britain’s closest global ally in the United States. The Government seems incapable of working with any sense of momentum within the UN though the imposition of travel and asset sanctions on Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi and his entourage was a measured and co-ordinated step. Mr Cameron’s Tories are a laughing stock in the European Parliament as his MEPs consort with a ragbag of right-wing anti-Semites and homophobics in an effort to show-off their anti-European virility for the sake of domestic approval. They were even rebuffed in their attempt to take control of the leadership of the European Conservative and Reformist Group. Home and away, this Government is floundering.
