The Libya questions Cameron did not answer

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If those cross-wired messages on targeting from Liam Fox and William Hague offered a clue, then the last few hours in the Commons will have confirmed what many have been thinking.

As Tornados fly above Libya and Tomahawk missiles strike the ground below, British military involvement – and the strategy on which it is based – seems to have a worrying degree of finger-crossing at its core.

Of course, the prime minister's statement on Libya was assured and statesmanlike: David Cameron has been summoned early to the global stage, but so far he looks thoroughly at home.

And for the first few minutes, MPs listened in a reverential silence. Then the questions began, and the speech became fragmented as Cameron was forced to take countless interventions.

He did so with courtesy, but while the charm offensive immediately helped to diffuse the concerned interruptions from all side of the House, it provided little in the way of answers.

Enforcing a no-fly zone, said the prime minister, was "legal and right", and on that point he appears to have support of the vast majority of MPs, including Labour leader Ed Miliband and the Liberal Democrat's foreign affairs sage Sir Menzies Campbell.

But from across the chamber an array of questions were left uncomfortably unanswered, four particularly so.

Firstly, where does the operation end? Cameron's Conservative colleague Nadhim Zahawai wanted confirmation that current military action would not mean regime change, while Sam Gyimah was similarly concerned by the resolution's scope.

The Libyan people would decide their future, Cameron insisted, before adding that he expected to be asked "how and when this will end."

Quite, but the answer was not forthcoming today. Ed Miliband agreed that "we don't always know how it will end", and while the Labour leader agreed with MPs who called for frequent updates from the government on Libyan operations, the lack of an obvious full stop or even projected timescale for operations is a huge concern.

After all, it is easier to get into wars than out of them, as Dennis Skinner pointed out. For once, David Cameron agreed with him.

Secondly, why Libya? Andrew George, the Liberal Democrat MP, was particularly animated on this point, asking the prime minister why no action should be taken in Yemen, a point later made by Labour's David Winnick in relation to Saudi Arabia.

The prime minister's answer centred the Tony Blair's thesis of doing the right thing somewhere, even if you can't do it everywhere.

In a rare moment of levity Miliband laughed that neither he, nor Cameron, would be competing to call the policy "the Blair doctrine".

In the shadows of the backbenches, his brother David did not smile, but as the Labour leader repeatedly cited military intervention in Kosovo in 1999, it was impossible not to think that this policy, whether it is muscular liberalism or liberal interventionism, had more than a whiff of Blair about it.

Thirdly, is Gaddafi a viable missile target? Over the weekend defence secretary Liam Fox seemed to think so. William Hague, the foreign secretary, said not, but despite pressure from MPs, Cameron side-stepped this question.

Former Tory foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind made the case for Gaddafi's removal; a former Labour defence secretary Bob Ainsworth criticised Fox's "loose talk". Sir Menzies Campell wondered what would happened if Gaddafi was in a command centre at the head of a military operation which would be a viable target? The prime minister's face gave nothing away.

Fourthly, there is the issue of cost, as raised by the Tory backbencher Julian Lewis, who said he was only ‘minded to support' the operation. In this age of austerity, and just days before the chancellor gives a budget which will not shift from the government's tough agenda of cuts, the escalating cost of intervention abroad is hardly likely to be a popular policy. Any figures or financial baselines were notably absent from Cameron's speech.

Time and again, Cameron stressed the legality and international support which underpinned the foreign policy he has advocated on Libya and Colonel Gaddafi.
The message was clear: he is not Blair and this is not Iraq.

Nevertheless, it remains a military operation in a Muslim land, with no end date, no clear objective, and one seemingly based on the need to intervene when you believe it is right. "If you dip your toes in you are very soon up to your neck", warned Rory Stewart, a Tory backbencher with first hand experience of Iraq and Afghanistan. The toes are already dipped. Like the prime ministerial fingers, I imagine they will be hopefully - and not altogether comfortably – crossed.

Sam Macrory is political editor of The House Magazine.