| Summary/Abstract |
“BRITAIN HAS got its mojo back,” said the British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne on December 7. He wasn’t doing an impression of Austin Powers. He was speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations about the British Parliament’s decision to bomb ISIS in Syria. Osborne explained to the council that he and the prime minister, his close friend and ally David Cameron, had tried to intervene militarily in Syria two years earlier and had been rebuffed by the House of Commons. “It was quite a striking moment,” he recalled, with sadness. “It was a moment when Britain was unable to follow the lead asked of it by our prime minister and the government.” But George Osborne felt better because now Britain was dropping bombs over Syria—for him a “source of real pride.”
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