David Cameron

David Cameron swept up on the wind of change to Egypt

PM's trip will not only be key event of Middle East tour but also marks a rebalancing of his foreign policy

David Cameron is visiting Egypt at the start of a planned tour of the Middle East. Photograph: Stefan Wermuth/Reuters

When prime ministers encounter a bumpy period there is always a pithy quote at hand from the late Harold Macmillan to explain the challenge.

Two of the sayings of "Supermac" – the last Etonian to have served more than a year as prime minister – are apt as David Cameron becomes the first world leader to fly into Cairo since the recent revolution.

"Events, my dear boy, events," the old showman reportedly said to a journalist in response to a question about what is most likely to blow a government off course.

The "events" could might be blowing Cameron's foreign policy off course are the "wind of change" sweeping across the Arab world. The "wind of change" was one of Macmillan's other great sayings as he told the South African parliament, during his 1960 tour of Africa, that the apartheid state had to accept the world was changing.

Flying into the Middle East at the height of the Arab world's "1989 moment" to promote British trade – the polite way of referring to the sale of arms – would have made Cameron look grossly out of touch. Over the weekend, Britain was forced to revoke arms export licences to Bahrain and Libya.

Cameron, who is nothing if not fleet of foot, has responded to today's "wind of change" by hastily adding a visit to Egypt at the start of a long-planned trip to the Middle East. Sprinkling a touch of democracy, by visiting some of the heroes of Tahrir Square, should do the trick, Downing Street hopes.

The short five-hour hop to Egypt, in which Cameron will also urge the leadership of the country's military council to live up to their commitments to hold free and fair elections, will easily be the most significant event of this week's Middle East trip and not just because it will guarantee headlines across the world. It might also mark a rebalancing of Cameron's foreign policy.

When Cameron arrived in Downing Street he said that one of the main priorities of British foreign policy – after stabilising Afghanistan – was to promote trade. The new prime minister told a meeting of every British ambassador, summoned to a special conference in London on 6 July, that they should be "economic ambassadors for Britain".

This is what the prime minister told the Foreign Office Leadership Conference: "I want you to ask yourself every day: 'What am I doing to promote British business?' If you want to keep Britain's great ambassadorial residences then I want you to show me that every day you are using them relentlessly to open new trade links and to generate new business for Britain."

Cameron, who made clear he believed that Gordon Brown and Tony Blair had failed to do enough to promote trade, followed up his speech by taking the largest British trade delegation to India later that month. He then led another trade delegation to China in the autumn. This meant that, within months of taking office, he had visited two "Bric" countries – the world's most important developing economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China.

Today's visit to Egypt is designed to show that Britain does not have a "one-legged" foreign policy focused solely on trade. The prime minister will insist that promoting political reform – his main mission today and a part of his mission throughout the week as he visits other Middle Eastern countries – is completely consistent with flying the flag abroad for British business.

Cameron's message is that promoting trade links and encouraging political reform creates stability. This, he will say, is in everyone's interests.

Critics will no doubt say that "events" have prompted a recasting of the prime minister's approach to foreign policy. David Miliband, the former foreign secretary who has been one of his most eloquent critics, recently dubbed the prime minister's focus on trade as "low-grade mercantilism".

This is what Miliband told the Commons foreign affairs select committee: "We kid ourselves if we think we're going to do well at trade by retreating to become simply a group of tradesmen and women. In my view, we will diminish our trading possibilities with China, as well as elsewhere, if we think that just going on and on about trade will increase it: it won't.

"The way you have influence is through long-term relationships on big issues that matter to other countries. China cares about its own stability and about regional stability. It also cares about its place in the UN and we have to be players on those scenes. If we are not, we will become not like France, but sort of sub-France. Low-grade mercantilism is not a foreign policy."

At least Cameron is not "sub-France" when it come to Egypt – he has beaten Nicolas Sarkozy to Cairo. Egypt is a sensitive subject for Sarkozy, who recently ordered his ministers to take holidays at home after François Fillon, the prime minister, took a new year break in Egypt paid for in part by Hosni Mubarak.

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