Blair takes ‘the stabilisers off the Basra bike’: how long before it falls?

The Shatt al-Arab hotel in Basra offers arguably the most wretched four-star accommodation in the Arab world. It has flushing toilets, but that is where the luxury ends. Its swimming pool is now a rubbish tip, and water has not passed through its taps for months. It has long been unclear to its only guests, the 1st Staffordshire Regiment, what purpose they serve by staying there other than to provide target practice for the militias who launch missiles into the building every day. Finally the army has wearied of this. There is no point to their remaining, so the troops are coming home.

The Prime Minister did not quite phrase it like this on Wednesday. The picture he painted of Basra was necessarily broad-brush — too much detail and his thesis would have fallen apart. His strategy has to be about ‘handing power back to the Iraqis’ — as if this, rather than bequeathing stability to liberated Iraq, was always the British aim.