His ambition in Mali is not just to lend a few aircraft to the French, but to go after the jihadis and “close down the ungoverned space in which they thrive”. Given that the ungoverned space to which he refers is the size of France, this is no small undertaking – yet he appears to mean it. “Here’s my strategy on the Cold War,” Ronald Reagan once declared. “We win, they lose.” Cameron has the same strategy for African jihadism and puts it just as succinctly: “We must beat them militarily.” Not something the Nigerian or Algerian forces have been able to do so far, but the Prime Minister has just flown to Algiers to offer his help.