Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

David Cameron’s fog of war

The Prime Minister's foreign policy pronouncements are displaying no clear strategy. So far, his party doesn't mind

David Cameron cut short his holiday to return to Westminster, following the beheading of journalist James Foley Photo: Getty 
issue 23 August 2014

It was clear that things were going wrong for David Cameron when he had to say that his position on Iraq was ‘very, very simple’. To use that phrase was to admit that things had become very, very muddled. They remain so now.

The Prime Minister started the week with a robust line on the bloodshed in Iraq. He declared the start of a ‘generational struggle’ against Islamic extremism that would last for ‘the rest of my political lifetime’. Michael Fallon, his Defence Secretary, gave a Churchillian address to airmen in Cyprus, informing them that the British mission in Iraq was not simply humanitarian and would probably last for months. An order was given for RAF Tornado fighters to leave Norfolk and jet off towards this new theatre of war.

The following morning, the Prime Minister appeared to have plucked out his hawkish feathers. Britain was not, he said, going to war again in Iraq.

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