Dream publicity for Cameron and Sarkozy

You just can’t buy publicity like this.

In Benghazi last Thursday, the Libyans gave Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron the sort of rapturous welcome that neither leader could ever receive in his own country.

Cameron’s advisors must be reveling in it, particularly since the news on the home front – strikes, riots and non-existent growth – is so unremittingly awful.

The only minor alarm was that Cameron was rather upstaged by his French counterpart, despite being about a foot and a half taller. (Incidentally, Sarkozy appears to possess a curious combination of Gordon Brown’s weirdness and Bill Clinton’s charisma.)

Cameron rolled the die in Libya, and he’s been incredibly successful – so far. It might have been different, of course.

Tony Blair’s premiership never recovered after things started to go wrong in Iraq, and Anthony Eden was doomed after Suez. On the other hand, Margaret Thatcher might have been a one-term Prime Minister without the Falklands, and Blair’s early years in Downing Street were bolstered by the adulation he received in Kosovo. Winston Churchill bucked the trend by losing the ’45 election, but even he couldn’t resist reveling in the role of victorious warlord three years earlier in Egypt, after Britain’s first offensive successes of the war gave him political boost in the nick of time.

What kind of impact will the pictures from Benghazi have on the average British voter?

Perhaps not much in the long term, but for now Cameron has a much needed tonic as we enter a winter of that looks more discontented with each passing day.