In my four decades in and around Westminster, I have met plenty of wrong ’uns and seen lots of scandals and disastrous appointments. But I can say with utter certainty that the appointment of Ed Miliband as Foreign Secretary by Andy Burnham is, by a very long way, the most nauseating appointment of my lifetime. It is genuinely sickening.
The appointment presents two possibilities, both of which are worrying
Miliband is the man who, as Labour leader in 2013, effectively vetoed British military action against Syria’s dictator president al-Assad by whipping the Labour party against it. It was the single most amoral decision of any mainstream party leader in living memory.
It had emerged in August 2013 that al-Assad had murdered over 1,400 people, using sarin nerve gas to kill them. Earlier that year, US president Barack Obama had announced a supposed ‘red line’ which he would not allow Assad to cross: the use of chemical weapons. In the wake of Assad’s use of sarin, prime minister David Cameron agreed to join the United States (and France) in military action to destroy as many of Assad’s chemical weapons as possible.
Cameron had pledged on becoming PM that the Commons would be able to vote on military action, so there was a debate on 29 August to approve the strikes. To what should be his eternal shame, Miliband chose to whip Labour MPs against that action, saying there needed to be “compelling evidence” that it was indeed the “Syrian regime [which] was responsible for the use of these weapons”.
The evidence was abundant and was certainly compelling; the only people who disputed it were the Russians who facilitated Assad’s chemical weapons, various fringe lunatics who maintain to this day that the entire Syrian civil war was some sort of Western conspiracy – and Ed Miliband.
To be fair to him, Miliband did not actually dispute the evidence. Rather – in much the same manner as five years later his successor as Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said evidence should be produced that the Russians had poisoned Sergei and Yulia Skripal and Dawn Sturgess in Salisbury – Miliband merely asked for more evidence of Assad’s guilt. But this was pure sophistry. The evidence was clear and overwhelming. There was not an atom of doubt.
Miliband was marching his MP troops into the No lobby to oppose action against Assad despite the Syrian leader having butchered his own people with chemical weapons. With rebel Tory and Lib Dem MPs joining him, the government was defeated.
With that defeat, Obama took fright at the same possibility happening in Congress and military action was dropped. That had two main consequences. First, Assad was given the green light to carry on – which he did. The subsequent deaths, which could have been avoided if Miliband had not blocked action, should sit heavily on the conscience of the man who is now Foreign Secretary. There is, however, no evidence that he gives a damn. In subsequent interviews he continues to defend his position in 2013.
It was only when Trump became president that action was taken, with the US using its cruise missiles to destroy a large proportion of Assad’s air force in one night mission. When Assad then attacked the rebel area Douma, the US, France and the UK came together to strike his chemical weapons plants and destroy them.
The other main consequence of Miliband’s behaviour is that it sent a message to Vladimir Putin confirming what he saw in 2008 after he had invaded Georgia: that the West would say a lot but do nothing. He saw that nothing had changed – and the following year launched his first invasion of Ukraine, moving into Crimea.
But this does not only tell us how appalling it is that Miliband now represents us globally. It is also revealing about Burnham. The appointment presents two possibilities, both of which are worrying. Either Burnham actually agrees with Miliband’s stance – which is possible, given that he was in the shadow cabinet under Miliband at the time. Or he simply doesn’t care, which in its own way is equally concerning.
Whatever the appointment of Miliband says about the man who gave him the job, the fact he took it shows that our new Foreign Secretary is incapable of shame.
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