The Spectator’s Notes | 4 June 2011

It remains a risky thing to say, but is it possible that, in Libya, the West may be about to have a foreign policy success on its hands? Criticism of the Nato bombings has been based on the idea that the allies had no real knowledge of what they were doing.

It remains a risky thing to say, but is it possible that, in Libya, the West may be about to have a foreign policy success on its hands? Criticism of the Nato bombings has been based on the idea that the allies had no real knowledge of what they were doing. This is not true. The targeting seems to have been accurate, and so does the intelligence about the state of the Gaddafi regime. Defectors tell us useful things. No Arab nation tries to save the dictator. He is desperately trying to buy his way out. If this all ends as it should, I hope some critical attention will be devoted to the behaviour of the ANC in South Africa, not only under Jacob Zuma, but back to the Mandela era. Gaddafi, killer of many black Africans in Chad, has consistently been lionised and protected by the ANC. One wants to know why.

I recently met a man who had flown to Tripoli in very different circumstances. In the 1960s, he told me, he gave PR advice to Hugh Hefner of Playboy. Under good King Idris, Libya was a burgeoning market for the magazine, so off they all flew in the famed black Playboy Jet with a bunny on the tail, attended by Jet Bunnies, and accompanied by the revolving bed. They were tumultuously received. When the time came to depart, air traffic control refused the jet permission.