Gordon Brown entered Downing Street in June 2007 hoping to relegate Iraq to history, but defence and foreign policy analysts said the war gave him little room to manoeuvre politically.
Before taking office Brown acknowledged mistakes in post-war planning and filled his cabinet with critics of the invasion, signalling a cooler relationship with Washington. Anti-war campaigners were encouraged, yet concluded that the leadership change produced no real shift in direction.
Britain had roughly 4,100 troops in Iraq at the time, based at Basra airport and focused on training local security forces in what the military called an overwatch phase. Plans were underway to reduce that number to around 2,500, but analysts at the Royal United Services Institute cautioned that the Iraqi National Army still lacked the logistics, intelligence, and equipment needed to operate independently, making a continued British presence necessary for the foreseeable future.
Rosemary Hollis of Chatham House argued that the conflict was too unresolved for Brown to credibly treat it as a closed chapter. Afghanistan had by then displaced Iraq as Britain's central military concern, with several analysts describing it as a campaign the West could actually win.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this wire report, first published in March 2008, in its own words.