First France, and now Britain. The courtship of Syria proceeds apace. There is, of course, nothing wrong with engagement, as the Bush years have taught us. Ideally, however, robust diplomacy should be harnessed to a coherent strategy. That is what is lacking in the cosying up to Bashar al-Assad and his regime.

Mr Assad owes his re-entry into polite geopolitical society in the first instance to Nicolas Sarkozy. The Syrian leader became persona non grata under President Jacques Chirac after the 2005 assassination of Rafiq Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister, which was linked by United Nations investigators to Damascus. Syria, above all, was on the US black list, not just for backing Hizbollah and Hamas but because the regime facilitated the passage of jihadis into Iraq – even allowing recruiting in full view of the US embassy in Damascus.