The death of the leading Shia Islamist politician who forged Iraq’s current governing majority, along with the abrupt reconfiguration of Shia forces into a new coalition that excludes the current prime minister, have thrown a new spanner into the already sputtering engine trying to pull Iraq back into some kind of normality.

A dangerous vacuum has opened at the heart of Iraqi politics, just as US troops have pulled out of the country’s cities and begun the restoration of its sovereignty.