Libya has not been Cameron’s finest hour, but it’s not been a disaster

The government has been damaged by its response to the Libyan crisis and the SAS incident in particular. William Hague has been branded a ‘serial bungler‘, and the FCO’s response was condemned as slow and ill-prepared. The consensus is that heads should roll at King Charles Street. Many commentators have also argued that the Prime Minister was too quick to call for a no-fly zone over Libya. Nobody, not even government loyalists, could argue that the last few weeks have been David Cameron’s finest.  

However, one can be too critical. Let’s start with the SAS mission. Something obviously went wrong, but it is hard to believe that ministers could have done anything differently. Their job is to set direction, not to micromanage operations. When they do, or when the centre of government becomes operational, you end up with Oliver North. So, while the Foreign Secretary must take the blame for the fiasco, it seems unfair to demand that he take on the job of John Sawyers, the head of SIS. Ministers decide; officials implement.

Then there is the no-fly zone. Last week, newspapers were saying that the Prime Minister was out on a limb. But, this week, the position he took in the House of Commons looks decidedly mainstream. The Gulf Cooperation Council has now demanded “that the UN Security Council take all necessary measures to protect civilians, including enforcing a no-fly zone over Libya”. The French government is also in step with the UK, having jointly sought various UN resolutions. French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe even pushed China’s Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi on the no-fly zone option. This, incidentally, is the same French administration that many said the Tories could never work with. In the US, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said that the United States is “actively considering” a no-fly zone. All in all, the PM’s line seems closer to the emerging consensus than his detractors would admit.

The government has also been attacked for favouring a policy that it no longer has the means to implement. We have heard a stream of vested interests talk about whether the government should have kept this or that piece of equipment in the SDSR. They have all missed the point. When Tony Blair talked tough to Slobodan Milosevic, he was not proposing that the UK alone bomb Serbia. And, in the end, the Dassault Mirage 2000 contributed alongside F-14 Tomcats to the NATO mission. The same is true today. The PM proposed a policy, not a unilateralist stance.

Grave errors have occurred, but to proclaim disaster, as many in the media have, is to exaggerate.