Nothing eases pressure on a leader like a foreign trip. Thatcher took herself to Paris the day before her downfall. Tony Blair took himself to Moscow, Delhi and Islamabad before invading Afghanistan. The floundering Boris Johnson could not stay away from Ukraine. Last week, assailed by two byelection defeats, Rishi Sunak sought consolation on the red carpets of Riyadh, Cairo and Tel Aviv.
To what possible end? Blair’s flirtation with great-power diplomacy went to his head, and disastrously so. After traipsing round one capital after another, he told his 2001 party conference: “The pieces are in flux … let us reorder this world around us.” His reorder, he said, should cover Africa, Asia and even “the slums of Gaza”. He was obsessed after any crisis with being the first to call the White House. When the Afghan war broke out, he wanted his bombers up there with America’s. When Iraq imploded two years later, America had no need of British troops, but Blair insisted. It was post-imperialism as Fomo – fear of missing out.
