Blair, Cameron and a legacy of bloodshed

AS a verdict on David Cameron’s intervention in Libya, yesterday’s report by the all-party foreign affairs committee is as devastating as Lord Chilcot’s evisceration of Tony Blair over Iraq. Confirming everything this paper warned at the time, the MPs find Mr Cameron ordered the attack without proper intelligence analysis, drifted into regime change and shirked his moral responsibility to help reconstruct the country after Colonel Gaddafi’s fall.

What he left behind, says the committee, was: ‘Political and economic collapse, inter-militia and inter-tribal warfare, humanitarian and migrant crises, widespread human rights violations, the spread of Gaddafi regime weapons across the region and the growth of Isil (Islamic State) in north Africa.’

Indeed, it is hard to imagine a graver set of charges to weigh on the former prime minister’s conscience in the week he stood down as an MP – causing many to speculate that the report’s contents may have prompted his decision to go.

As security chiefs queue up to say they warned that intervention was not in the national interest, the truth is that almost every criticism levelled against Mr Blair over Iraq applies to Mr Cameron.

Why do politicians never learn from their predecessors’ catastrophes?

When will they understand that trying to impose democracy on tribal societies by force is likely to cause nothing but misery and imperil world peace?

Many have argued that withdrawal from the EU will be Mr Cameron’s true, if accidental, legacy. But wouldn’t he far rather be remembered for Brexit than for accidentally promoting anarchy and the rise of IS in north Africa?