Politics

William Hague’s attack on Israel is a hint of big changes to come

29 July 2006

Since becoming leader Mr Cameron has rejected the neocon label explicitly, saying he is simply ‘conservative’ — much as he lays claim to ‘Thatcherite not Reaganite’ economic policies. ‘We are about the conservatism of the national interest, putting Britain first,’ he says. For Conservatives sensitive to such code, this language is consistent with a gentle and (in their eyes) overdue break from both Washington and Jerusalem.

With such little ideological baggage, Mr Cameron is well placed to rebuild Tory foreign policy from scratch. And yet, with few hard ideas of his own, he finds himself buffeted by two competing currents of Conservative opinion. The party has long housed an Arabist contingent, whose arguments were as passionately advanced as they were comprehensively dismissed by past leaders. When Iain Duncan Smith set the policy on Iraq, he declared the party’s relationship with America an issue for ‘leadership, not compromise’.

When Mr Howard shifted the party’s ground to criticise the war, just under two years ago, he was widely attacked for craven opportunism (and barred from the White House). This experience is a painful and abiding memory for Francis Maude, the party chairman, who is nervous about comparable policy reversals — what Labour caricatures as ‘flip-flops’. He believes that, having supported the overthrow of the Taleban in 2001, the Tories must stick with the consequences — including the deployment of British troops to the lawless Helmand province which Mr Cameron visited this week. But Mr Maude’s view does not command a consensus. As one shadow Cabinet member argues, ‘We gave Blair a blank cheque in Iraq. It is now time to revoke it with Afghanistan.’

Mr Cameron travelled out with Liam Fox, who after a sluggish start has now embraced his defence brief with such enthusiasm that he is memorising military aircraft types and cooking corned beef at home. He was a staunch supporter of the Iraq war, yet believes the Helmand mission is overstretched and misconceived. Poppy-farming will never be stamped out if it is the only means of survival, he argues; obedience to central government cannot be taught at gunpoint to a region which has never recognised the writ of Kabul.