Africa

The situation in Libya is still uncertain, but the fog of war is clearing to expose a depressing picture. Forces loyal to the Gaddafi regime are conducting a successful offensive. The Times’ Deborah Haynes confirms reports (£) that Zawiya has fallen and rebels have been forced from the oil town of Ras Lanuf. William Hague has spoken to Mahmoud Jabril, Special Envoy of the Libyan Transitional Council. The Foreign Office has issued a communiqué on the conversation and some of Jabril’s emotional concern escapes the bland text. In the words of the Foreign Office, he wants ‘the West to act to hinder Qadhafi's ability to inflict further violence on the Libyan people, including through a no fly zone.

A strange sort of anniversary, but an anniversary nonetheless: it is 31 years, to the day, since Robert Mugabe took power in Zimbabwe, or Rhodesia as it was still called. In which case, here is The Spectator's leading article from the time. It is, for the large part, a good demonstration of the benefits conferred by hindsight. But its caginess about Mugabe is apparent in such observations as, "It is up to Mr Mugabe whether he leads his country into yet another black tyranny, corrupt and inefficient, or whether he builds on what has already been built." Mugabe, it seems, made his mind up on that one some time ago. Off the the Rhodesian hook, The Spectator, 8 March 1980 Mr Mugabe's victory in the Rhodesian elections is overwhelming.

Should Gaddafi be pushed? That is the question diplomats and policy makers are beginning to ask. The UN has imposed travel restrictions and frozen Gaddafi’s assets. But Gaddafi is resisting the hangman’s noose; the loss of his Mayfair property empire is the merest of inconveniences. And still he fights on. There is now a growing humanitarian case for direct military intervention by Western powers. However, there are plenty of arguments against even introducing a no-fly zone. Gideon Rachman makes some of them in today’s FT: ‘A few of the problems are practical. Some military observers say that a no-fly zone would be of limited use in Libya, since Col Gaddafi seems to be mainly relying on ground forces.

At a speech to the Royal Defence Academy earlier in the year, Andrew Mitchell outlined the costs of overseas conflict to Britain and offered a number of lessons for the future. The most important, he argued, was the need to help prevent wars before they start, starting with being “better at identifying the potential for conflict.” The Cabinet’s only ex-soldier, Mitchell has seen up close the cost of conflict, burns with anger about the Rwandan genocide and knows that development funds will forever be wasted if people are mired in violent conflict.

The Comprehensive Spending Review was a step in the right direction, but I agree with Philip Booth and others when they say that there should be far more cuts down the line. But the biggest mistake was the announcement that the Department for International Development’s (DfID) budget will be increased by 37 percent by 2015. It undermines the narrative that the country will be suffering the cuts together and shows a tone-deafness in cutting spending at home while increasing it abroad. But worse, it exacerbates the problem that development aid does an immense amount of harm to the developing world, and this spending increase will only make things worse.

This morning's papers share a unifying theme: the failure of political leadership to secure a deal at Copenhagen. Now, I applaud politicians for not succombing to enormous pressure and making a series of pledges that would risk grinding the world's poor ever deeper into the dirt. For those who take a different view, it is not that politicians have failed, but that high politics is an irrelevance, a vanity. I know Coffee Housers loathe her opinions, but Polly Toynbee is at her polemical best today. She writes: 'Politics is being weighed in the balance and found wanting. The writing is on the wall. The leadership required within and between each nation is heavier lifting that the weak machinery of governmental power can manage.

Is it legitimate to discuss the strength of the link between HIV and Aids? It’s one of these hugely emotive subjects, with a fairly strong and vociferous lobby saying that any open discussion is deplorable and tantamount to Aids denialism. Whenever any debate hits this level, I get deeply suspicious. Which is why the below clip – from a documentary which The Spectator Events division is screening next week, called House of Numbers – aroused my interest. The film picked up awards at various American film festivals, but has since been denounced as backing Aids denialism. Yet the footage shows Luc Montagnier – who won a Nobel prize last year for his work on Aids – saying that many HIV infections can be shrugged off by a healthy immune system.