Suez Crisis to prefer to use the sea route through the Suez Canal. As it was, the rise of super-tankers for shipping Middle East oil to Europe, which were too big to use the Suez Canal meant that British policy-makers greatly overestimated the importance of the canal. By 2000, only 8 percent of the imported oil in Britain arrived via the Suez canal with the rest coming via the Cape route. In August 1956 the Royal Institute of International Affairs published a report titled "Britain and the Suez Canal" revealing government perception of the Suez area. It reiterates several times the strategic
Suez Crisis resigned, and his unsuccessful handling of the Suez Crisis eclipsed the successes he had achieved in the previous 30 years. Eden's successor, Harold Macmillan, accelerated the process of decolonisation and sought to recapture the benevolence of the United States. He enjoyed a close friendship with Eisenhower, dating from the North African campaign in World War II, where General Eisenhower commanded allied invasion forces and Macmillan provided political liaison with Winston Churchill. Benefiting from his personal popularity and a healthy economy, Macmillan's government increased its Parliamentary majority in the 1959 general election. The Suez crisis, though a blow to British power