Bernard Ingham: A painful reality check for Cameron and fatal blow to enthusiasts for war

The appetite for bombarding Syria with possibly counter-productive token missiles is alive and resurgent among the great and the good. It is in line with the fashion for presentation rather than substance. Instead, Assad should be told his only future lies before a war crimes tribunal.

David Cameron is also still very much with us but, as a self-appointed coroner, I would counsel him to curb his enthusiasms and make sure he can fulfil his endless ambitions before he bruits them abroad. Leadership is one thing: suicide another.

The Tories’ reputation for party and coalition management may be not quite dead but it is scarcely twitching. It beggars belief that, faced with a fragile Parliamentary Labour Party and wobbly Liberal Democrat coalition partners, the whips ended up with 61 Tories voting with Labour or abstaining. Ye Gods! Are they completely out of touch with their backbenchers or can’t they count?

It is also clear that the coalition got in the way of common sense by requiring Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg to have the final say in the debate instead of William Hague who, as Foreign Secretary, is the most authoritative on the Syrian civil war.

Ed Miliband’s Labour leadership is for the moment more alive than dead and his reputation for indecision and politicking greatly enhanced. Consequently, the coalition ought to be asking itself if it can do business with this man.

This brings us to the alleged death of the special relationship with the United States now that Obama has followed Cameron in seeking Congress support.

Let me remind you of the insubstantial foundations of this remarkable institution. It was so special that it took years not months for America to join the fight for civilisation in WWII.

It survived Suez, Harold Wilson’s refusal to get involved in Vietnam, Ted Heath’s Europhilia and Thatcher’s famous rows with Reagan over the Falklands, the invasion of Grenada and his willingness to get rid of nuclear weapons.

There is an undoubted affinity between us, old colonial power, and the New World rebels of more than two centuries ago, but the strength of the bond varies with personalities. It was curiously never more healthy than in the turbulent 1980s of Reagan and Thatcher and never more sick than with that poodle Tony Blair in No 10.

Barack Obama, never an Anglophile, will take time to recover – even assuming Congress backs him next week.

It will be all the harder for him because we have refused to join in punitive action when he was just about the last person on this planet to want to open another theatre of war, notwithstanding the use of chemical weapons. He will feel let down.

We should recognise this and so work harder at restoring relations when the tumult and shouting have died.

But let us not get worked up about John Kerry, US Secretary of State, referring to France as the USA’s “oldest ally”. Kerry will learn, like all American politicians, who in the end are reliable in Europe and who are not.

We also have to ask how much the US wanted us on board when, the day after the Commons debate, Kerry came out with the firmest yet condemnation of Assad, with a detailed death toll attached?

So who – or what – is dead, apart from a lot of innocent Syrians? Well, democracy, however badly managed by the Government, certainly is not. A collective Parliamentary view has been expressed about the utility of getting involved in the unholy mess that is the Muslim world.

Heaven only knows what will happen when Nato leaves Afghanistan, even more so after yesterday’s warning that the Afghan army and police will need the West’s support for a decade because they’re sustaining more than 100 losses a week. Iraq is also terrorised by bomb, bullet and sectarian violence.

The Arab Spring is turning to bloody winter. Turkish and Jordanian borders are refugee camps. Iran and Russia are still up to their tricks. And the Middle East peace process is its usual unpromising self.

So, this coroner records only one sure death – that of any easy future UK entry into war unless British interests and lives are clearly at stake.

The fatal blows were struck by Afghanistan, Iraq, Blair’s destruction of trust in governors and perhaps even a recognition that we can’t afford futile gestures.

The process of coming to terms with reality is painful, even humiliating, but necessary.