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

On Monday, perhaps for the first time in his life, David Cameron turned right after boarding an aircraft. There is no business class in the RAF Hercules that ferried him to Afghanistan; to enter it by door rather than by loading ramp is luxury enough, and the only in-flight entertainment is an industrial-strength headset to deaden the sound of the engines. Icebergs aside, this was his first serious foreign trip as leader.

Since 9/11, Tory policy on the war on terror — with the exception of Michael Howard’s wobble over Iraq — has been largely inseparable from that of Tony Blair; so much so that the Prime Minister has often left the Commons chamber with the wrong kind of applause ringing in his ears. But among the quieter voices of dissent when Iraq was the main issue of the hour was Mr Cameron’s own. Privately, the young MP admitted to colleagues that he opposed the war, but did not feel strongly enough to rebel over it. ‘I’m not like you neocons,’ he once explained, only half-jokingly, to friends who proudly described themselves as such.

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.