As Labour rebuilds, beware the revisions of history

Labour’s catastrophic defeat at the general election was obviously surprising. To many people who are committed to a more honest and just approach to British foreign policy in the Middle East, it was a difficult result to accept. Under Ed Miliband’s leadership Labour had been instrumental in parliament’s decision to recognise a Palestinian State and, with the help of government rebels, the party scuppered the plans by David Cameron and Barack Obama to bomb Syria in 2013.

I agreed strongly with both of these actions, though I was far less sanguine than some about their potential significance. Recognising a Palestinian State may all be well and good, I argued, but it would be meaningless without more substantive change in terms of the basic distribution of power in that context.

On Syria, it was hard to see how the potential destruction wrought by NATO missiles would do anything to end the suffering of the people targeted by the Assad regime. Moreover, I was suspicious that Western righteousness and anger inspired by a dictator’s abuse of his people would turn to ignorance and apathy soon after the first clusters of bombs had been dropped. This would leave – as we saw in Libya and Iraq – a mess for the local population to clear up and little patience in the West for continued support. In both cases then, my perspective was don’t-do-something-stupid-and-make-matters-worse.

In the end, Ed Miliband was proven right not to intervene. In Syria, a solution for the chemical weapon crisis was found through diplomatic channels and Britain proved its lack of commitment to dealing genuinely with the humanitarian side of the crisis with its resistance to accepting refugees into the EU. This was a policy of “proposing to stand back and watch one lot of innocent people drown so as to deter another from following them into boats.” According to the Economist: “That logic was wrong as well as morally repugnant. Even before the recent disaster, the death rate this year, compared with the start of 2014, was ten times greater—and still people have been coming in the same numbers.”

The now former Labour leader made headlines during the election campaign when he criticised this policy, though Labour’s own approach to immigration was hardly the clearest, or the most progressive.

After the election

On the Friday after election day – as the reality of a Tory majority began to sink in – Ed Miliband was one of three party leaders to resign. In his resignation speech, he accepted responsibility for the election loss and it did not take long for critics to emerge from behind the scenes.

According to some, Labour had been outflanked by UKIP in England and the SNP in Scotland, both of which combined nationalist populism with an ability to mobilise a keenly felt sense of detachment from political elites. Others, mostly the remnants of the Blairite old-guard, offered thinly-veiled criticism of what they saw as Ed Miliband’s anti-business stance and demanded a swift return to the “centre ground”. Labour’s position on foreign affairs was not discussed in depth, however.

The other Miliband

That was the case until the end of May, when David Miliband, who had been his brother’s rival in the 2010 leadership election, gave a lecture at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Though the former foreign secretary has committed himself publicly to his current job – President and CEO of the International Rescue Committee, a New York based charity – he seemed to set out something of a personal manifesto for restoring Labour to a party of government.

The focus of his speech ranged from frustration with the UK’s apparent decline from the frontline of world politics, to an implied critique of his brother’s reluctance to go to war in Syria. “The norms and laws of war need to be reaffirmed, so that civilians are protected from the worst of warfare… The high price of the mistakes of the west in Iraq and Afghanistan have sapped confidence that western powers will do anything other than make things worse, and drained support for anything other than hand-wringing. That is the explanation for the UK’s almost complete absence from the political as well as military battlefield.

David Miliband, of course, was partly responsible for those “mistakes”, having voted “very strongly in favour” of both wars and against investigating the Iraq campaign. Though his admission that it was “perhaps” possible that Iraq under Saddam would have held together better than the current status quo is an improvement on Tony Blair – newly appointed as an European anti-extremism something, by a think tank – who appears to be stuck in denial.

Others in the leadership race took a similar position on Iraq. Two front runners, Andy Burnham – who was a Parliamentary Private Secretary in the Home Office at the time of the war – and Yvette Cooper – then an Under Secretary – both strongly supported it. Burnham, though, has won support from the left as the candidate who has been most vocal on Palestine.

Liz Kendall, meanwhile, only became an MP in 2010 and so has not served in government. She apparently opposed the war in Syria, while – confusingly – also criticised the post-Iraq “isolationism” of the Cameron government.

Perhaps the great hope for the Labour leadership, particularly for those on the left who seek greater commitment to justice and stability in the Middle East, is the newest candidate to join the race, Jeremy Corbyn. The MP for Islington North was one of Tony Blair’s fiercest critics on the Iraq war – which he called a “seminal disaster” – and opposed war in Syria. But more importantly, unlike the dangerous, self-serving, demagoguery of some critics, Corbyn’s objections are built on a strong and long-standing opposition to tyranny and dictatorship in the region. Additionally, his stance on Israel-Palestine has always been one of the most praiseworthy.

Reality check

Corbyn is unlikely to win. Indeed as it stands it is not clear if he will even gain the initial requirement of nominations from 35 MPs and so he may be forced out of the race before it begins. David Miliband, on the other hand, is already plotting his return, if not necessarily to lead Labour; it is likely that he will play a significant role in shaping the party’s new direction, beginning with a major speech in the UK scheduled for just after the leadership election has concluded.

For shame

One other parliamentarian who stood firm against the Iraq war was the then leader of the Liberal Democrats, Charles Kennedy, who sadly and suddenly passed away this week. Though he was unable to stop the march to war his steadfast opposition was a ray of sunlight in a time of bitter darkness in British politics. One of Kennedy’s finest moments came just a year after the war had begun. Addressing Tony Blair, he said, “I do hope that in the years to come, in his most private moments when he reflects on all of this, the well-documented litany of failings and the political misjudgements that went with them, I do hope the prime minister might acknowledge a sense of personal shame.”

Where the official opposition tried to wiggle out from under its responsibility for enabling the war, Kennedy’s sincere words reflect the fact that he had consistently opposed Blair’s military action from the outset. His speech was both just sharp and elegant enough to expose how devastating the decision had been, and how it had truly tarnished the image of the then prime minister.

Evidently Mr Blair has not acknowledged that shame; at least not publicly. But the future of the Labour Party does not depend on him. Rather, it is likely that it will be up to one of the mainstream leadership candidates and their supporters. They should learn from that shameful past and eschew the arguments of men like David Miliband, especially when they’re making the case for misguided military action where more moderate, more decent and less glamorous actions could be taken than repeating the “bomb-and-forget” campaigns of Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.

Don’t just “DO SOMETHING!”

The modern Labour Party, it seems, suffers from a very painful affliction. This is the condition brought about by “surplus morality”, which manifests in the overwhelming need to “DO SOMETHING!” to solve the world’s problems, even when a realistically practical “something” is not clear, nor is a strategy to manage the aftermath well thought through and in place.

Ed Miliband, apparently, drew on the legacy of Clement Atlee, the prime minister who oversaw Britain’s withdrawal from its Empire in India and who built the Welfare State at home, as an inspiration. His brother David follows in the footsteps of Blair, the man who took us to war in Iraq. I hope that in the forthcoming leadership campaign and in the reconstruction of the party, Labour stays true to its roots, especially when it comes to foreign policy in relation to the Middle East, which, it is likely, will remain a focus of much of its attention whilst in opposition.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.