Surrender Monkey

In the slow march to war in Iraq in 2003, relations between the UK, France and America were at an all time low - as the UK Labour Prime Minister, Tony Blair made a strategic alliance with a Republican President, George Bush, while a more natural political ally in the shape of the Conservative French President, Jacques Chirac, flatly refused to support the case for military action against Saddam Hussein.

As the world contemplates how to respond to the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime in Syria, the political scene is very different to that in 2003 - America has a Democrat as President (Barack Obama), the UK a Conservative Prime Minister (David Cameron) and  France has elected a Socialist President (Francois Hollande).

All three are agreed that the Syrian Government has used chemical weapons against its own people - and all three are agreed that a carefully targeted military response would play an important role in helping to protect civilians from further such deadly attacks. 

President Francois Hollande is a lifelong socialist, of course, as is Ed Miliband - the leader of the Labour Party - which makes it all the more difficult to understand how two people who share the same broad political outlook can end up facing in completely opposite directions when it comes to dealing with difficult problems like Syria - especially as French socialists, according to opinion polls, are the strongest supporters of a strike against Syria, with their far right opponents the most vocal group against taking any action.

Now I can't see President Hollande being dubbed a 'poodle' - French or otherwise - for deciding to support a tough American led response to the latest Syrian atrocities, but in doing so President Hollande and his fellow French socialists must see something -  that is somehow escaping Ed Miiband and the UK Labour Party.