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SPAIN is not actively participating in Nato actions against ISIS but will bring up the rearguard, said Spain’s president Mariano Rajoy.

Rajoy is wise on two counts. Firstly because military might cannot crush jihadists: they are career martyrs and want to die.

Rajoy also has municipal, regional and general elections next year and will never forget the photograph of his predecessor and mentor Jose Maria Aznar with Bush and Blair. It was taken as they prepared to invade Iraq and Bush’s hand paternally encircles the former president’s shoulder. And that hand and that March 2003 photo lost the Partido Popular the general election of March 2004.