Large numbers of backbench Conservative MPs were also queasy about getting involved in the Syrian civil war, as was a majority of the British public. The shadow of the Iraq war, which parliament authorised on the basis of dodgy intelligence, loomed large.When Nate Silver packed his? flag into a box this summer and trundled it from the New York Times, where it had flown for the last three years, for planting at ESPN, he cemented his status as one of the Marquee Brothers, that fraternity of overachieving reporters whose journalistic triumphs have inspired media outlets to grant them nation-state status inside the greater organization.