IN 1956 General Nasser, the ruler of the newly independent Egypt, nationalised the Suez Canal. It runs through Egypt, was dug by forced Egyptian labour and legally belonged to the Egyptian state.

Britain, France and Israel responded by sending in gunboats, warplanes, paratroopers and marines to grab the canal back and try to overthrow Nasser. Egyptian troops fought back.

The US, Russia and the United Nations opposed the imperial adventure. Britain, France and Israel were forced into a humiliating retreat, with nothing to show for a couple of hundred deaths among the invaders and over a thousand Egyptian civilians and soldiers killed.

There are two lessons from Suez: first, these imperial adventures, with Western troops trying to rule the world, are ugly, stupid failures. Second, Britain cannot do them independently — without US backing, anyway.

In the Commons debate about the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Suez debacle was mentioned five times. But not one MP drew the obvious lesson — that imperial adventures and military occupations are a bad thing.

Instead, all the MPs — Labour and Tory — only worried Afghanistan was, like Suez, a “humiliation” for British foreign policy, that showed we still played second fiddle to the US.

Many of our political leaders are unable to learn the most basic lessons of history, preferring imperial fantasies about how we can, one day, again have successful  British invasions and occupations, 65 years after they were finally shown to be absolute folly.