Steve Richards
Miliband has secured an outcome so far that chimes with his personal doubts about this military intervention while keeping his party together.
by Steve Richards
The relentless onslaught against Ed Miliband in recent days shows at least that those who support hasty wars intervene without hesitation when they fail to get their way. They are angry, blame the Labour leader and make a wider, more deadly assertion, claiming the sequence shows Miliband is unfit to be prime minister. What should have been a major crisis for a suddenly powerless prime minister has become instead another trauma for the leader of the opposition.
The attacks from within Miliband’s restive party and outside take many noisy forms. Miliband is giving succor to Bashar Al Assad. The Labour leader stands for nothing. He betrays David Cameron in the same way he let down his brother. He turns his back on internationalism.
In expressing their anger, they show a deliberate or inadvertent misunderstanding of what it is to be a leader of the opposition. Miliband’s tormentors frame their critiques as if he were one of them, an individual free to express his view with unambiguous clarity. “We don’t know whether he is for or against intervention,” some of his critics proclaim loftily, offended by the leader’s evasive lack of purity compared with the neat precision of their arguments.
But leaders of the opposition are rarely free to express their personal views on any topic. A key text for understanding the constraints of leadership out of power comes from an interview with Neil Kinnock in the late 1980s, when he was battling to scrap Labour’s commitment to unilateral nuclear disarmament. In a situation of Shakespearean complexity, Kinnock was struggling with his own deeply held convictions as well as those of his party.
What he meant was that as leader he had wider responsibilities: to maintain party unity, to frame a message with the widest possible electoral appeal, and to attempt to achieve these objectives while staying as close as possible to personal convictions.
Miliband faced a situation of multi-layered complexity in relation to Syria, not as an individual but as a leader of a divided party and as someone who seeks to be prime minister. On the basis of his previous position in relation to Iraq, I assume that he personally, and with good cause, was wary of military intervention. But as leader of a party, unlike former leaders, backbench MPs and columnists, his personal view was only one of a thousand considerations. The other considerations he had to take into account included the dangerous internal divisions in his troubled party, with some senior shadow cabinet members favouring military intervention and others opposed; a former leader breathing down his neck, who led the country into calamitous war but who also won three elections and has a big following in parts of the media; an elder brother who, on the first day of a new job in the US, wrote an article for a British newspaper expressing support vaguely for military intervention; a Conservative onslaught supported by powerful newspapers aimed at portraying him as weak and useless.
I can hear the more ardent admirers of Tony Blair exclaim that their political hero was never like that. He took decisions, meant what he said and said what he meant, always offering “strong leadership”. This is nonsense. As leader of the opposition Blair behaved in a very similar fashion in terms of contortions and wobbles. He briefed pro-Europeans that he wanted to join the euro while telling the Sun newspaper that he “loved the pound”. At one point in opposition, Blair wanted to rule out increasing the tax burden under a Labour government — a wobble of extreme timidity. A youthful Ed Balls courageously and rightly pointed out to him that such a pledge would block his main aim at the time, which was to improve public services. He sought a UN resolution partly in order to keep his party united, and yet planned to take part in the war if he failed to secure one.
What Miliband has done in relation to Syria is not an act of elegant beauty. Acts of beauty are not available to leaders. He has followed the advice of another currently underestimated leader. David Cameron does not want another vote in the Commons over Syria because he fears that a majority of Conservative MPs would vote against. His reluctance has nothing to do with Miliband. He, too, is a leader who must make calculations before following his personal instincts. At least Miliband has secured an outcome so far that chimes with his personal doubts about this particular military intervention while keeping his party together.
It is not pretty, and Miliband lacks the political artistry to make his moral expediency seem like strong leadership, as Blair or Margaret Thatcher would have done. But before condemning a leader critics should look at the context in which he leads. Rightly, Miliband gives diplomacy more time, while those in his party, like Ben Bradshaw on these pages on Thursday, who support military intervention cite their leader to make the case. In a saga as complex as Syria, this is as pure as it gets.
THE GUARDIAN
Miliband has secured an outcome so far that chimes with his personal doubts about this military intervention while keeping his party together.
by Steve Richards
The relentless onslaught against Ed Miliband in recent days shows at least that those who support hasty wars intervene without hesitation when they fail to get their way. They are angry, blame the Labour leader and make a wider, more deadly assertion, claiming the sequence shows Miliband is unfit to be prime minister. What should have been a major crisis for a suddenly powerless prime minister has become instead another trauma for the leader of the opposition.
The attacks from within Miliband’s restive party and outside take many noisy forms. Miliband is giving succor to Bashar Al Assad. The Labour leader stands for nothing. He betrays David Cameron in the same way he let down his brother. He turns his back on internationalism.
In expressing their anger, they show a deliberate or inadvertent misunderstanding of what it is to be a leader of the opposition. Miliband’s tormentors frame their critiques as if he were one of them, an individual free to express his view with unambiguous clarity. “We don’t know whether he is for or against intervention,” some of his critics proclaim loftily, offended by the leader’s evasive lack of purity compared with the neat precision of their arguments.
But leaders of the opposition are rarely free to express their personal views on any topic. A key text for understanding the constraints of leadership out of power comes from an interview with Neil Kinnock in the late 1980s, when he was battling to scrap Labour’s commitment to unilateral nuclear disarmament. In a situation of Shakespearean complexity, Kinnock was struggling with his own deeply held convictions as well as those of his party.
What he meant was that as leader he had wider responsibilities: to maintain party unity, to frame a message with the widest possible electoral appeal, and to attempt to achieve these objectives while staying as close as possible to personal convictions.
Miliband faced a situation of multi-layered complexity in relation to Syria, not as an individual but as a leader of a divided party and as someone who seeks to be prime minister. On the basis of his previous position in relation to Iraq, I assume that he personally, and with good cause, was wary of military intervention. But as leader of a party, unlike former leaders, backbench MPs and columnists, his personal view was only one of a thousand considerations. The other considerations he had to take into account included the dangerous internal divisions in his troubled party, with some senior shadow cabinet members favouring military intervention and others opposed; a former leader breathing down his neck, who led the country into calamitous war but who also won three elections and has a big following in parts of the media; an elder brother who, on the first day of a new job in the US, wrote an article for a British newspaper expressing support vaguely for military intervention; a Conservative onslaught supported by powerful newspapers aimed at portraying him as weak and useless.
I can hear the more ardent admirers of Tony Blair exclaim that their political hero was never like that. He took decisions, meant what he said and said what he meant, always offering “strong leadership”. This is nonsense. As leader of the opposition Blair behaved in a very similar fashion in terms of contortions and wobbles. He briefed pro-Europeans that he wanted to join the euro while telling the Sun newspaper that he “loved the pound”. At one point in opposition, Blair wanted to rule out increasing the tax burden under a Labour government — a wobble of extreme timidity. A youthful Ed Balls courageously and rightly pointed out to him that such a pledge would block his main aim at the time, which was to improve public services. He sought a UN resolution partly in order to keep his party united, and yet planned to take part in the war if he failed to secure one.
What Miliband has done in relation to Syria is not an act of elegant beauty. Acts of beauty are not available to leaders. He has followed the advice of another currently underestimated leader. David Cameron does not want another vote in the Commons over Syria because he fears that a majority of Conservative MPs would vote against. His reluctance has nothing to do with Miliband. He, too, is a leader who must make calculations before following his personal instincts. At least Miliband has secured an outcome so far that chimes with his personal doubts about this particular military intervention while keeping his party together.
It is not pretty, and Miliband lacks the political artistry to make his moral expediency seem like strong leadership, as Blair or Margaret Thatcher would have done. But before condemning a leader critics should look at the context in which he leads. Rightly, Miliband gives diplomacy more time, while those in his party, like Ben Bradshaw on these pages on Thursday, who support military intervention cite their leader to make the case. In a saga as complex as Syria, this is as pure as it gets.
THE GUARDIAN
