by Zack Beauchamp
Pete Redford and Matt Beech think that Cameron's enthusiasm for the Libya intervention places his foreign policy views closer to Tony Blair's than the traditional Tory position:
By subscribing to more idealist liberal foreign policy themes and placing them next to traditional realist and pragmatic conservative foreign policy Cameron and his party are indicating that their view of the UK’s global role is different to that of their predecessors. In the aftermath of 9/11 New Labour maintained that the attacks fundamentally altered British foreign and defence policy. The rise of international terrorism and the emergence of a home grown terrorist threat have further cemented this with the fear of terrorist attacks cemented in the British consciousness as the biggest threat facing the UK.
This view is also taken by Cameron’s Conservatives who believe that the 9/11 attacks have indeed altered Britain’s foreign policy. However, Cameron’s view is in contrast to that of the three foreign secretaries in the article that served under Thatcher. To them 9/11 isn’t the decisive shift in foreign policy that New Labour and Cameron’s Conservatives see it as. They take an “archetypal Tory” view in that they are unsurprised by new events and that terrorism is ever present, just that throughout history it takes different forms.
The Dish 