History will judge Cameron

SIR – Splitting the Labour Party was one of Cameron’s main objectives as everything he does, including his Chancellor’s austerity, is for party political advantage rather than the national interest.

If he really wanted to show solidarity with France he would not be threatening Brexit to appease Ukip, and he would be co-operating with Hollande to end the miserable squalor of the Calias refugee camp. Clearly he does not care any more than he cares about the safety of passengers on the London underground which he does not have to use.

He even warned his moderate MPs such as John Baron who, as an infantryman, knows that without troops on the ground bombing can only lead to more terrorism, that they would be in the same lobby as “terrorist appeasers”.

In his ambition to have a seat at the conference table in Vienna he has blundered into a war that he now admits will be long-drawn-out, and Hilary Benn’s histrionic speech making a false comparison with our stand against fascism played straight into his hands.

Terrorist acts should be treated as criminal and not glorified as acts of war so that we react in exactly the way the terrorists want, as in Bush’s disastrous “war on terror”.

We are now part of a conflict much closer to the build-up to the first world war than to that of the second world war and, by acting directly contrary to Britain’s national interest, Cameron has placed us all in danger both at home and abroad.

As one of his predecessors famously said, history will be his judge.

Margaret Phelps Penarth, Vale of Glamorgan