A FORMER Tory Party chairman has accused Prime Minister David Cameron of turning Libya into a hotbed of extremists following the military intervention that brought down Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

Michael Ancram – a one-time Scottish Secretary – accused the Prime Minister of “doing an Iraq”, in a comparison with former Prime Minister Tony Blair.

His comments came on the second day of the serialisation of an unofficial biography of Cameron – Call Me Dave – written by former Tory donor and billionaire Lord Ashcroft, and journalist Isabel Oakeshott. The book has proved embarrassing for Cameron, with lurid claims about bizarre Oxford initiation ceremonies involving dead pigs and allegations of drug-taking at university and at a house party hosted by the Camerons.

Ancram said the UK’s military intervention in Libya had played into the hands of extremists.

“We now have a country which is ungovernable... with vast amounts of weapons from Gaddafi’s arsenal moved south of the border, arming Boko Haram [extremists in Nigeria],” he said.

“They’re actually more of a threat to us than Gaddafi was at the time.

“To claim it was only about protecting citizens in Benghazi, so we’re going to bomb the living daylights out of Gaddafi in the south and everyone else, just simply doesn’t hold water. It makes me think that, rather like [Tony] Blair, he was determined to change the regime.”

Ahmed Khweir, chair of Glasgow Ahlul-Bayt Association, which aims to increase dialogue among faith groups, told The National the Government should not have involved itself in the political complexity of the Middle East without analysing the roles of potential allies and considering non-military options.

He said: “The Arab spring was misdiagnosed and was actually played up. Libya is a classic example of policy naivety that the people are paying the price for.

“War is never a constructive solution, it should never be glamorised as ‘ousting a dictator’.

“Sometimes it’s clouded as ‘skilful operations’ but ultimately the intelligence can be very suspect and innocent civilians usually pay the heaviest price.”

Khweir added that it was obvious there were “suspect politics” surrounding Syria.

“The role of Gulf and North African countries was underplayed,” he said. “You only need to look at the passports of the so-called ISIS recruits to see this wasn’t just an internal uprising.

“The UK and US partnered military groups to oust President Assad without fully knowing who they were supporting.

“These politics do nothing to ease conspiracies that these wars were orchestrated by the MoD in order to justify its investment in weaponry and subsequent sales.

“By contributing to the instability to the whole region and almost kamikaze politics – which is always painted as shrewd, calculated and thorough – was no more than a complete bungle and has had severe and lasting consequences of which the UK should play its humanitarian part in helping to clear up.”

Former chief of the defence staff General Sir David – now Lord – Richards, condemned Cameron’s “incompetent” response to the turmoil in Libya and Syria, and accused him of relying on his experience in the Eton cadet force.

He complained about the PM’s “knee-jerk support for the underdog”, according to the latest claims from the book, and told Cameron during clashes over foreign policy that “being in the combined cadet force at Eton” did not qualify him to decide the tactics of complex military operations.

“We never really analysed things properly,” he said.

“Our instinct is knee-jerk support for the underdog, without doing the analysis that would necessarily legitimise that course of action.”

There were also reports of fury in US President Barack Obama’s team about Cameron’s failure to win Commons support for bombing Daesh in Syria.

One administration insider is quoted saying: “It was one of those astonishing displays of incompetence that sort of leaves you wondering about how, you know, have we all got this far?”

Sources told the authors the White House considered it had been “f***** over” on both Libya and Syria.

The book also alleges that Cameron had a “derring-do” plan to take out Syrian President Bashar Assad, which senior figures argued “would have been getting everybody into deeper waters”.

Cameron is also facing renewed calls from Labour to clarify when he was told that Ashcroft held “non-dom” status – meaning he could avoid paying UK tax on his worldwide income.

Details of the peer’s arrangements emerged publicly in March 2010, when Cameron was said to have only just learned of them.

However, Ashcroft, who has donated around £8 million to the Tories, has now cast doubt on this version of events.

He said: “In 2009, I discussed the matter in detail with Cameron. He was therefore fully aware of my status as a so-called non-dom.”