This Libyan mess will be the end of Britain as a world power

By Daniel Knowles
Last updated: August 1st, 2011
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Libyan rebels cannot count on British support

If there ever more damning evidence of how seriously Britain’s wars in Afghanistan and Libya are being taken, it is the quiet in Westminster. George Osborne is in Hollywood, Nick Clegg is in Spain and David Cameron is in Tuscany. William Hague is left alone in Whitehall. When he took to the Today programme this morning, itself much cut down thanks to another BBC strike, it felt like a formality – another MP filling the airwaves with white noise to fill the space of recess.

But then suddenly it becomes clear that this is the Foreign Secretary and he’s talking about massacres. In Syria, tanks are murdering people in the streets. This, says Hague, who only months ago was talking about how Assad might still be a reformer, “is a very frustrating situationâ€