Excoriating Ed
| Cartoon by Steve Bell -The Guardian |
If I had to put any money on it, I'd guess that David Aaronovitch, whom I've never met or spoken with by the way, is - very broadly speaking - supportive of the Labour Party; a sometime Labour voter I imagine though not, perhaps, a party member.
So his withering assessment of Labour leader - Ed Miliband - which appeared in the Times the other day is all the more powerful because Aaronovitch at least starts out as a 'critical friend' - as opposed to an implacable political opponent.
Ed Miliband is no leader. He is a vulture
By David Aaronovitch
The Syria vote crystallised his failings. He waits for mistakes, then like a scavenger exploits them
At the weekend a left-leaning colleague from another newspaper came home from holiday abroad and began asking his associates how Ed Miliband had come by his position on Syria. And no one could really tell him. It was a mystery. Somehow the Labour leader had ended up being the agent of Britain bowing out of any military response to the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime.
This colleague realised that last week’s vote was the biggest moment of Mr Milband’s leadership. It is the act that tells you more about him than anything else he has done.
In deciding to oppose the Government’s motion — which incorporated most of the caveats to action which Labour had previously asked for — Mr Miliband and his Shadow Foreign Secretary, Douglas Alexander, went far beyond duffing up poor old post-beach, red-shouldered David Cameron. Mr Cameron, after all, is their day-to-day foe. They also rejected the call by President Obama that Mr Assad “be held accountable” for an action that, dreadful in itself, posed a huge risk to others if it went unpunished.
They turned down the appeal of John Kerry, the US Secretary of State, for a response both punitive and exemplary against Syria’s armed capacity. They decided not to heed President Hollande’s assertion that “when a chemical massacre takes place, when the world is informed of it, when the evidence is delivered, when the guilty parties are known, then there must be an answer”.
These leaders are not Bush and Cheney, they are not the semi-mythical veins-in-my-teeth rocket-penised neocons. Labour supported Mr Kerry for president in 2004 (maybe Ed, in the US and silent during the Iraq war even campaigned for him), they backed Mr Obama in 2008 and 2012, and celebrated when Mr Hollande won the French presidency. These men are not just Britain’s allies. They are Labour’s natural friends. No one could accuse Mr Obama of having rushed into anything over Syria.
So how did Ed Miliband end up hindering these friends? What was his strategy? What did he actually want to happen?
The simple fact is that everyone knew where David Cameron stood. He believed that Assad’s forces had used chemical weapons on a large scale on August 21. And he believed that it was necessary for an armed response to that attack to punish Assad, to weaken his military, to deter him from further use of chemical weapons and to deter others.
But what did Labour want? A couple of months ago I had a conversation about Syria with Douglas Alexander, a man I’ve always liked and — until that moment — thought highly of. He was being critical in a sort of nitpicking, legalistic way of the Government’s position on Syria. I said to him that people had a right to expect an idea of Labour’s foreign policy strategy in broad outline. It was the job of the Opposition, he replied to me, to hold the Government to account.
So, in the first instance Labour said they wanted evidence. Remember? “First the evidence and then the decision”? With the suggestion surely that if the evidence was forthcoming, then the decision would be for action. After all, if you were already decided on inaction, then why wait for the evidence?
The Government’s motion, if passed, would have allowed for that process, but it was opposed and defeated. In the absence of a commitment by Labour to support the Government when the evidence was available, Mr Cameron cannot bring another motion to the House.
Since then the Labour position has mutated. Forget the evidence. Forget the plans. Forget the argument. Forget the legality. It was being put about this week that Labour would now only back action if “there is a very significant change. There are two examples: if al-Qaeda got possession of very large stockpiles of weapons or if there is a direct threat to national security”. By next week it will only be if a member of the Assad family with a pot marked “anthrax” jumps on the Duchess of Cambridge.
How has Labour ended up in a situation whereby a major attack with chemical weapons could happen without a significant reponse by this country in concert with its allies? Mr Miliband could have accepted the government motion last week and taken the credit for getting a proper process established before action.
And he was presumably aware that the casualties would not just consist of David Cameron, but of any future Prime Minister’s incapacity to suggest a course of action — however essential — that might be unpopular in the country. Of his own future capacity to take action.
Peter Hain in an article this week argued that there could be no military victory but only “a negotiated settlement between Assad and his enemies”. That at least is a position. An impossible one, but it’s a position.
Does Labour believe it, though? Does Labour, in fact, believe anything? Anything at any rate that it is prepared to risk actually saying? During the debate it sunk itself into the Coalition of the Unwilling. There was the usual heavy nodding during routine invocations of “exit strategies” and “mission creeps”. Let them fight it out between themselves. The Tory Right and pro-Assad George Galloway commended Mr Miliband for his blow for democracy. From outside Parliament Nigel Farage did the same.
And perhaps here we do come to it. We are living through a bad-tempered and isolationist moment in British politics. When Mr Galloway and Mr Farage agree it is because something sounds good to both of them. It was well put by Lord Ashcroft this week. “People,” he wrote, “see the pace of change continuing and even accelerating, and they know Britain in 20 years will look different from the Britain of today, let alone that of 20 years ago. Some welcome that, many are ambivalent and others are scared.”
Many want to stop the world. No entanglements. Fewer immigrants. Stop this, don’t build that. Get out of Europe. Above all a section of the electorate wants to stop things from happening.
And Ed Miliband intuited that the British people, overall, probably didn’t want something to take place over Syria, and decided that instead of arguing with them, he’d join them. Just as he has done over immigration. He’d become the spokesman for nothing. He wouldn’t outline his own alternative strategy — he’d just defeat Mr Cameron’s.
And in this moment of crisis it became clear — as it does — what Mr Miliband is. A personable man (and he is a very pleasant companion), politically he is not a presence at all, he is an absence. He is Oedipal Ed, the negator of the unpopular actions of the fathers; the anti-Blair, the non-Brown. His technique for victory to is follow behind the leader, wait for a slip-up and exploit his or her mistakes. He did it to his brother. He hopes to do it to David Cameron. He is neither hunter nor prey, he is scavenger. He is a political vulture. Mission creep? His mission is all about creeping.
And though you can just about see how in a bad year Ed Miliband could become prime minister, what I cannot any longer pretend, after three years of his leadership, is that he would be a good one. On the contrary. I think he would be a disaster. Strangely, I think both the country and his party already know it.
The Syria vote crystallised his failings. He waits for mistakes, then like a scavenger exploits them
At the weekend a left-leaning colleague from another newspaper came home from holiday abroad and began asking his associates how Ed Miliband had come by his position on Syria. And no one could really tell him. It was a mystery. Somehow the Labour leader had ended up being the agent of Britain bowing out of any military response to the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime.
This colleague realised that last week’s vote was the biggest moment of Mr Milband’s leadership. It is the act that tells you more about him than anything else he has done.
In deciding to oppose the Government’s motion — which incorporated most of the caveats to action which Labour had previously asked for — Mr Miliband and his Shadow Foreign Secretary, Douglas Alexander, went far beyond duffing up poor old post-beach, red-shouldered David Cameron. Mr Cameron, after all, is their day-to-day foe. They also rejected the call by President Obama that Mr Assad “be held accountable” for an action that, dreadful in itself, posed a huge risk to others if it went unpunished.
They turned down the appeal of John Kerry, the US Secretary of State, for a response both punitive and exemplary against Syria’s armed capacity. They decided not to heed President Hollande’s assertion that “when a chemical massacre takes place, when the world is informed of it, when the evidence is delivered, when the guilty parties are known, then there must be an answer”.
These leaders are not Bush and Cheney, they are not the semi-mythical veins-in-my-teeth rocket-penised neocons. Labour supported Mr Kerry for president in 2004 (maybe Ed, in the US and silent during the Iraq war even campaigned for him), they backed Mr Obama in 2008 and 2012, and celebrated when Mr Hollande won the French presidency. These men are not just Britain’s allies. They are Labour’s natural friends. No one could accuse Mr Obama of having rushed into anything over Syria.
So how did Ed Miliband end up hindering these friends? What was his strategy? What did he actually want to happen?
The simple fact is that everyone knew where David Cameron stood. He believed that Assad’s forces had used chemical weapons on a large scale on August 21. And he believed that it was necessary for an armed response to that attack to punish Assad, to weaken his military, to deter him from further use of chemical weapons and to deter others.
But what did Labour want? A couple of months ago I had a conversation about Syria with Douglas Alexander, a man I’ve always liked and — until that moment — thought highly of. He was being critical in a sort of nitpicking, legalistic way of the Government’s position on Syria. I said to him that people had a right to expect an idea of Labour’s foreign policy strategy in broad outline. It was the job of the Opposition, he replied to me, to hold the Government to account.
So, in the first instance Labour said they wanted evidence. Remember? “First the evidence and then the decision”? With the suggestion surely that if the evidence was forthcoming, then the decision would be for action. After all, if you were already decided on inaction, then why wait for the evidence?
The Government’s motion, if passed, would have allowed for that process, but it was opposed and defeated. In the absence of a commitment by Labour to support the Government when the evidence was available, Mr Cameron cannot bring another motion to the House.
Since then the Labour position has mutated. Forget the evidence. Forget the plans. Forget the argument. Forget the legality. It was being put about this week that Labour would now only back action if “there is a very significant change. There are two examples: if al-Qaeda got possession of very large stockpiles of weapons or if there is a direct threat to national security”. By next week it will only be if a member of the Assad family with a pot marked “anthrax” jumps on the Duchess of Cambridge.
How has Labour ended up in a situation whereby a major attack with chemical weapons could happen without a significant reponse by this country in concert with its allies? Mr Miliband could have accepted the government motion last week and taken the credit for getting a proper process established before action.
And he was presumably aware that the casualties would not just consist of David Cameron, but of any future Prime Minister’s incapacity to suggest a course of action — however essential — that might be unpopular in the country. Of his own future capacity to take action.
Peter Hain in an article this week argued that there could be no military victory but only “a negotiated settlement between Assad and his enemies”. That at least is a position. An impossible one, but it’s a position.
Does Labour believe it, though? Does Labour, in fact, believe anything? Anything at any rate that it is prepared to risk actually saying? During the debate it sunk itself into the Coalition of the Unwilling. There was the usual heavy nodding during routine invocations of “exit strategies” and “mission creeps”. Let them fight it out between themselves. The Tory Right and pro-Assad George Galloway commended Mr Miliband for his blow for democracy. From outside Parliament Nigel Farage did the same.
And perhaps here we do come to it. We are living through a bad-tempered and isolationist moment in British politics. When Mr Galloway and Mr Farage agree it is because something sounds good to both of them. It was well put by Lord Ashcroft this week. “People,” he wrote, “see the pace of change continuing and even accelerating, and they know Britain in 20 years will look different from the Britain of today, let alone that of 20 years ago. Some welcome that, many are ambivalent and others are scared.”
Many want to stop the world. No entanglements. Fewer immigrants. Stop this, don’t build that. Get out of Europe. Above all a section of the electorate wants to stop things from happening.
And Ed Miliband intuited that the British people, overall, probably didn’t want something to take place over Syria, and decided that instead of arguing with them, he’d join them. Just as he has done over immigration. He’d become the spokesman for nothing. He wouldn’t outline his own alternative strategy — he’d just defeat Mr Cameron’s.
And in this moment of crisis it became clear — as it does — what Mr Miliband is. A personable man (and he is a very pleasant companion), politically he is not a presence at all, he is an absence. He is Oedipal Ed, the negator of the unpopular actions of the fathers; the anti-Blair, the non-Brown. His technique for victory to is follow behind the leader, wait for a slip-up and exploit his or her mistakes. He did it to his brother. He hopes to do it to David Cameron. He is neither hunter nor prey, he is scavenger. He is a political vulture. Mission creep? His mission is all about creeping.
And though you can just about see how in a bad year Ed Miliband could become prime minister, what I cannot any longer pretend, after three years of his leadership, is that he would be a good one. On the contrary. I think he would be a disaster. Strangely, I think both the country and his party already know it.
