Update  Apologies for the earlier version – struggling with new voice recognition software…

The chaotic rule of Col Gaddafi looks to have ended in predictable, chaotic circumstances. Contradictory reports are flooding in about what exactly has happened to Gaddafi, but it looks pretty safe to bet that something Pretty Bad has taken place on and around his person and that in one way or another he is a goner.

 

When the upheaval in Libya started, there was a flurry of interest among British and other speechwriters over how dictators should best seek to present themselves when things begin to crumble. The surreal Gaddafi umbrella broadcast and the stagnant attempt by Egyptian leader Mubarak to reassure the Egyptian masses were both beyond hopeless in terms of the most elementary oratorical technique. How, we wondered, could we get lucrative positions advising dictators on what to say in such stressful circumstances?

 

It’s by now a cliche to laugh at how dictators surround themselves with cronies who themselves either refuse to believe that things might be over or are too craven to help the Bad Leader devise a safe exit strategy.

 

Think of the options Gaddafi had when it all started. He could have called in UN and Arab senior mediators to help launch a long and boring dialogue with the opposition: lots of scope there for divide and rule.

 

Or he might have promised to step down gracefully after so long in power, inviting in international experts to manage a phased transition to something more pluralistic while giving himself enough time to set up a new political movement able to give him some cover.

 

If those options looked too complicated, why not grab great piles of swag and go into voluntary exile somewhere? Okay, not that many countries were keen to host him, but with so much money to spend a smart villa in secure quiet part of Venezuela might not have been too uncomfortable?

 

Yet like a dim-witted moth circling into its own fiery destruction, Gaddafi unerringly chose violent defiance and yet more self-delusion, ending up charged with international war crimes and scuttling from one dusty hiding-place to another until armed groups of Libyans finally tracked him down and polished him off (or not).

 

I have been invited to a discreet debating group in London in a couple of weeks’ time to talk on this strange subject: “Has our involvement in the Middle East morally and financially bankrupted us?”

 

I politely have suggested to the organisers that they might have a more interesting and relevant discussion if they replace the words “Middle East" with the word “Eurozone".

 

As I have previously argued, Tony Blair did the right thing to open up contacts with Gaddafi and try to set in motion some of the modernising processes which in fact have helped bring down the Gaddafi regime.

 

Part of the trouble with this sort of" positive engagement" with a bad regime is that it is a bit too easy to start identifying that bad leadership with “stability". Would Tony Blair have been ready to push for NATO to step in and help those Libyans rising up against the Gaddafi regime? Maybe not, although perhaps he would have been wily enough to get the message through to Gaddafi that it really was time to start tinkling about some of the options given above.

 

One way or the other, the end of the Gaddafi regime is an important foreign policy success for David Cameron. The idea that helping bring down stupid dictatorships somehow might be an act of moral or financial bankruptcy makes no sense whatsoever.

 

Well done Libya. You’ve done the easy bit. Now comes the long, decades-long slog to try to build a decent country.

 

For more, see some related observations over at The Commentator.