“We want institutions”. Thus read, Lord Malloch Brown told the Today program, a line of graffiti in downtown Benghazi. The report was treated with a bit of levity and it’s true that as rallying cries go it is not, perhaps, the most inspirational. Nevertheless it should remind us of something important, even if, as Newsnight later reported, the graffito actually read ‘Constitutional rule, elected president, 4 year non-renewable term limits’.