Middle East exposes chasm in coalition foreign policy outlook

Tory MPs think their partners have pro-Islamist sympathies while Lib Dems see the Conservative approach as simplistic

MPs were given a stark warning this week: "We've already lost Turkey, Lebanon is gone too" and now the west can't afford to lose Egypt.

The bearer of this message was Mort Zuckerman, the American newspaper and property mogul. He was in Westminster as a guest of the neoconservative Henry Jackson Society, which boasts Michael Gove and Nick Boles among its supporters.

This week it has felt, to contort Clarissa Eden's words, as if the Suez canal has been, if not flowing through the corridors of the Palace of Westminster, then at least making them a bit damp. Attention was very much elsewhere, yes. But people have also felt clueless, up the Suez without the proverbial. They have struggled to recall three pieces of insight about the Middle East.

Anyone with something to say on Egypt has been in demand. Zuckerman told me that he easily filled his schedule with meetings with MPs where he told them: "We need to keep Egypt from going Islamist."

Zuckerman's concerns help explain why the government's response to the situation has been so faltering: there is a split among the political classes, and particularly Conservatives, over the issue. Zuckerman speaks for some who are not sure they would like Egyptian democracy at any cost. Despite all the caveats about the relative profile and strength of the Muslim Brotherhood, its rise has dominated most conversations. Its dominance would lead to Egypt becoming actively hostile to Israel and boosting Hamas in Gaza, throwing out the strategic balance of the region.

Labour's Douglas Alexander urged caution was the Brotherhood's low profile due to its being "surprised" or down to shrewdness? Further, he cautioned, contra Zuckerman, that the governing party in Turkey is not an extremist party. The west will have to get to a more subtle view on the relative merits of Erdogan's party in Turkey v Hamas v the Musli! m Brothe rhood soon.

But it's between the two coalition parties that Suez may be more problematic.

Some Tories suspect their Lib Dem coalition partners of pro-Islamist sympathies: they point to the manifesto call for "pressure on Israel and Egypt to end the blockade of Gaza", which they believe was the Lib Dems taking the "Muslim Brotherhood line against the Egyptian government on Hamas".

The Lib Dem candidate at the general election for Bethnal Green and Bow was linked to the East London mosque, which has been accused by some of extremism, and across the country the party has used foreign policy to try to win Muslim votes most notably with its opposition to the war in Iraq.

The Lib Dems think that many Tories take a simplistic approach to the Middle East. One of Nick Clegg's closest advisers on foreign affairs says: "There are some of them [Tories] that take the view there is no such thing as a moderate Islamic party. I am very confident that's not the view Nick takes he is much more moderate." David Cameron has been circumspect, the adviser points out.

Cameron's chief of staff, Ed Llewellyn, who is the major foreign policy influence on the prime minister, has had to manage not only Lib Dem instincts but also Cameron's head of strategy, Steve Hilton. To the ire of the foreign policy establishment, Hilton has been urging what could be summed up as a "big society foreign policy" on the PM.

Insiders say that Hilton, whose parents fled Hungary in 1956 after the Soviets crushed the revolution there, feels strongly that Britain should keep well back. If the west tries to determine the course of events in Egypt encouraging Hosni Mubarak to go more quickly or less it will go wrong. He is even said to have an open mind on the idea of the Muslim Brotherhood being part of a post-Mubarak government.

Many Foreign Office mandarins are predictably dismissive of Hilton. They say that his approach is just a slightly Tory reworking of the former foreign secretary David Miliband's talk! of a "c itizen surge". But while it's to the relief of Tory neocons that Cameron's utterances yesterday show he hasn't listened, it is being suggested that Clegg might yet take up the theme.

Foreign policy isn't even mentioned in the coalition agreement. This week has been a reminder of the potential it has to divide the coalition.It is the kind of thing that brought Andy Coulson out in hives: an American academic who thinks that having lots of bohemians living next to each other is the key to economic growth. Well, he's coming to Downing Street to advise the government.

Richard Florida is famous for devising "bohemian indices", "gay indices" and "diversity indices" for cities. His theory is that metropolitan regions with high concentrations of technology workers, artists, musicians, and gay men and women whom he describes as "high bohemians" tend to have higher levels of economic development.

Living in a fluid personal and professional environment think beanbags, open-plan warehouses and white boards they are the "creative class". Their creativity attracts businesses and capital and as a cohort they should be tended to as engines of an area's growth. Making your city more appealing to these people would be a better way of regeneration an area than big public works projects.

The coalition is trying to put Florida's theory into practice. Cameron has spoken of his wish to create a creative hub to help Stratford's post-Olympics regeneration.

Some question whether Florida is right. They say it is education levels rather than the presence of "high bohemians" that creates a developed metropolitan hub.

Coulson once tried to spike the government's general wellbeing index, an attempt to gauge the happiness of the nation. A bohemian index would be an early test of whether Craig Oliver, the new Coulson, is going to play nicely.


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