Our (new) man in Tripoli

David Cameron just let slip that the man being sent to Libya by the Foreign Office will be our new ambassador. Only moments beforehand, No. 10 briefers had been very careful to describe Dominic Asquith as the High Representative and wouldn’t be drawn on whether the old UK Ambassador to Tripoli, Richard Northern, would be coming back.

But the Government has decided that Dominic Asquith, great grandson of the Liberal Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, will be our man in Tripoli.

John Jenkins, our man in Benghazi, is also in the process of relocatin to Tripoli. But it looks like the FCO and No. 10 have decided that Dominic Asquith, our man in Baghdad 2006-7 is the troubleshooter for this job. He hops across North Africa from Cairo where he’s been for some years – seen below with a recent visitor.

For the rest of the Libya statement, it was all peace, light and unity. Ed Miliband was amongst those queuing up to praise the prime minister and the foreign secretary for their decisiveness and good judgement. How close was it to going the other way? The UN was certainly working up plans for peacekeepers on the ground who would police a partition for nobody knew how long.

Mr Cameron told friends in the early summer that he thought Labour would soon try to wriggle off its backing for the Libyan action as the stalemate persisted. No. 10 advisers were convinced they could hear senior military figures getting their “I told you so” criticisms ready at the same time. None of that today as just about everyone praised the PM’s choice of action.

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