At 8am last Friday, Gordon Brown was at the Group of Eight rich nations summit in L’Aquila, Italy, preparing for a bilateral meeting with Libyan leader Colonel Muammer Gaddafi. Just as the British prime minister was about to enter the meeting, Tom Fletcher, his private secretary, drew him into a quiet room to relate some grim news. Five British soldiers from 2nd Battalion The Rifles had just been killed in two roadside bomb attacks in Helmand province, Afghanistan. “The prime minister sat for a moment very quietly,” says an official who was present. “He then asked us to go out and bring back the fullest possible detail on what had happened.”