It is unprecedented for the foreign office to leak the fact that they tried to stop the prime minister’s attack on Israel in his Ankara visit. Towards the end of a political reign the foreign office mice come out of their King Charles Street holes and start dumping on a prime minister on the way out as happened with John Major and Gordon Brown. But not since Suez have the eyebrows of our top diplomats been so raised or the juicy details revealed over lunch at the Travellers or Athenaeum.

A one-sided attack on Israel is easy and plays well to the largely Israel-hostile mood of the bien-pensants in Britain. But there are many concerned and worried Jews both here, in Europe and the in the United States who do not like what Israel is doing but who know that Jews in the Middle East have deadly serious enemies who will use Mr Cameron’s remarks to justify their ideology and hate.

In India, Mr Cameron seemed unaware that more Pakistani soldiers have been killed fighting the Taliban than all the European Nato contingent, including British troops, combined. Far more Pakistani citizens have been killed by Islamist terrorism than those who died in 7/7 or other atrocities. To be sure there is support for extremism in Pakistan, much of it financed by Saudi Arabia against whom no British prime minister dare utter a word. But Pakistan also faces 500,000 Indian soldiers camped in Kashmir and 70,000 Kashmiri Muslims killed since democracy was suspended there 20 years ago. Mr Cameron and his ministerial entourage were bold on Pakistan but reticent on using the K word and asking India to talk with Pakistan to find a solution to the Kashmir nightmare.

The prime minister believes that America was allied to Britain in 1940 and that Iran has a nuclear bomb. Whence this amazing ignorance? In the past the Conservatives were the party of foreign affairs and Labour was the home party. But something happened after 1997 and the Tories retreated from serious intellectual engagement with the world outside. Mr Cameron made entertaining trips to the Arctic and went to Georgia in August 2008 as Russian tanks rumbled towards the capital Tbilisi. US vice-president Joe Biden was also there and there is little doubt that the presence of foreign prominents like Mr Cameron may have stayed the Kremlin’s hand.

But Mr Cameron also broke links with all mainstream centre-right parties when he decided to set up his odd EU alliance with what Nick Clegg describes as “nutters, anti-semites and homophobes.” He forced Tory MEPs to accept the leadership of the controversial Polish MEP Michal Kaminski, despite his distasteful past exposed last year in the Observer. Now that alliance is coming under strain as MEPs in the group want to replace Mr Kaminski by someone who takes his duties seriously. For Britain, it means that the prime minister does get to meet and converse with his fellow conservative heads of government on the eve of EU council meetings. It is at these political soirees that real decisions get taken. Instead he is forced to making quick bilateral trips like the one to Italy where with ill-chosen timing Mr Cameron meets Silvio Berlusconi on the night of fully-fledged coalition crisis in the Italian parliament.

There are smart foreign policy people around Mr Cameron including his knowledgeable chief-of-staff, Ed Llewllyn, who was Chris Patten’s main aide in Hong Kong and is an able diplomatist. The FCO ministers under William Hague are competent. Mr Hague himself has sought to describe a British foreign policy free of too close links with America or EU and spoke warmly of the gulf states or north Africa as new areas for UK foreign power plays. We all want Dubai and Libya to be friends of Britain but they are not serious replacements for France, Germany or the United States.

British diplomacy has always been trade and export focused. Go into the swish Paris embassy bought from by Wellington in 1815 and you will see British cars and other products on display in the reception hall. French guests sit down to dinners of fine English wine and cheeses as our ambassadors do everything and anything to sell their country and what it produces. It is doubtful if top British businessmen will submit to flying 24 hours in economy class as ambassadors are now required to do when they report back from remote postings and the run-down of the foreign office which began under Gordon Brown when chancellor has been worsened under the coalition which is replacing a Rolls Royce by a Primark service.

Britain exports more to Ireland and Poland than to India. What the Indians and Turks want is easier access to trade in Britain but our visa rules and the protectionist cap on cutting non-white skilled professionals into Britain will worsen not improve relations with rising economic powers like Turkey and India. All this remains a puzzle. Why have the Conservatives who have kept a firm hand on international policy with control of the FCO, and the defence and development ministries got it so wrong so early?

Photo: El_Enigma