What Weight Should We Be Punching Above?

A mere twelve years after the Conservative Party gave the big rah-rah to the Reverend Blair's crusade in Iraq, and only four years after the wog-bombing of Libya, it appears that doubts are startng to creep in as to the general success of the whole civilisation-clashing enterprise, and whether the country can afford any more such gloriously accomplished missions. Crispin Blunt, who is chair of the foreign affairs select committee, has launched an inquiry into whether the results of the Libyan adventure - a failed state, a migrant crisis (refugee crisis, in Oldspeak), a lot more space for Islamic State to expand into, and the Russians growling from the sidelines about Western perfidy - really do constitute what might legitimately be considered a roaring success. It is quite probable that the recently-retired Willem den Haag, who was Minister for Wogs, Frogs and Huns at the time, believes that the enterprise was a spiffing job which has left the world a cleaner, safer place; but then den Haag was never really the stuff of which global statesmen are made. His glorious career began with losing a general election on a proto-UKIP save-the-pound campaign; progressed through years of jet-set smooching with Lord Ashcroft in Belize; and wound down with failure in a petty-minded coup attempt against that world-bestriding Great Satan, the Speaker of the House of Commons. Blunt, who was dethroned by his constituency executive committee two years ago for being too honest, and then voted back in by the membership, will doubtless be highly sympathetic.