The handover by British forces of their command in southern Iraq to a US general has started to close one of the most controversial chapters in the UK’s recent military history. Most of Britain’s remaining 4,000 troops will have left Iraq by the summer, by when US forces are committed to withdrawing from all Iraq’s cities and large towns.

The British army has emerged remarkably well from a damaging and discredited enterprise, which was the result more of misjudgment by its political masters than military misadventure. British troops were sent into Iraq on what would prove a false prospectus, without the solid backing of the nation, in probably the most unpopular expedition since the 1956 Suez war.