Come Back, David Miliband !

I have been extremely critical of David Miliband in the past, when he was a front-line politician in the last Brown Government, and widely regarded as the most likely next Labour leader. There was no question of his ability, either as a Minister or as a politician, but I found him far too smooth. He seemed to me the most successful of all the aspiring imitators of Tony Blair - Nick Clegg & David Cameron being among the others - with everything sinister that implies; for instance very powerful and infectious self-belief, the ability to persuade colleagues & voters to back highly dubious proposals. I found his ambition disturbing because it was so naked. Again like Tony Blair, he seemed to have a lust for power, a lust that if fulfilled would provide external confirmation of what he knew inside already all along, that he was right.

Now though I find my opinion of David Miliband has modified, and for the following reason: what he has not done since losing the Labour leadership election. Now, a majority of voters in the Labour leadership contest did what members of Parties often do when they have just suffered a bruising defeat and been turfed out of office after a long spell in it. They elect a leader who suits them, who they feel comfortable with (in this case Ed M), not the one who would most effectively make their case to the wider electorate (here, David M). This is because the latter kind of leader is necessarily suspect to them; because that leader by definition has a wider view of things than the majority of his party members; in the case of the Labour Party, he or she would be 'too right-wing'. Remember how the Tories elected that succession of no-hopers after John Major, their very own Brezhnev-Andropov-Chernenko sequence. I've had to look up what exact order they came in to make sure, but in a sense it doesn't really matter: William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith for heaven's sake !, Michael Howard. This is the same process at work. These leaders were sufficiently right-wing to suit the taste of the Party and activists, but too right-wing for the electorate at large.

Now Ed Miliband, after a stumbling start, is turning out to be a better leader of Labour than I had anticipated. I think he still has great difficulty coming over naturally in tv interviews. But it is not Ed I am concerned with here, it is David.

Think what has not happened since the outcome of the leadership election. There have been no stories of splits or tension or disagreement over policy between David and Ed. There has been no sniping at Ed, no critical running commentary, no secret hostile briefing to journalists from himself or from 'friends'. David retired from the front-line with the professed aim of avoiding stories of splits, and as it turns out has really done so. He has kept his own counsel, and been prepared to let Ed make his own way unhindered. Now - think of the amount of mischief David could have caused if he had wanted to, the civil war he could at least have tried to ignite, based on pique and wounded vanity; motives common in political disputes. That he has not done so is to me testament to his restraint. I infer that he has not done so from the absence of stories of conflict he could have generated had he wished, in a media only too eager to receive and amplify them.

Which all leads me to a position I never thought I would hold. What I would like to see is David Miliband returning to front-line politics. Why ? Because he knows what he's on about when it comes to foreign affairs. At this time of great turmoil abroad, especially in the Middle East and North Africa, where our interests and sympathies are involved and we face all sorts of choices and temptations over if and how to intervene (or put negatively to meddle), we need his voice, his expertise, his advice.

I think the recent check in his career has done David M good. It is in times of adversity and enforced silence that true character is both developed and shown. Think of Teddy Roosevelt in the Dakota Territory after his wife and mother died, or Churchill in his wilderness years. Lofty comparisons perhaps, but something akin to what David is undergoing now; his forty days and nights in the Desert.

One thing David may wish to contemplate during this time is his alleged complicity in Extraordinary Rendition while he was Foreign Secretary, one thing that remains a permanent stain on his reputation (http://bigthink.com/ideas/40079 via Graham Linehan, @Glinner on Twitter). Nothing could furnish stronger material for reflections on the responsibilities and morality of power. If it's true, it is a mistake he can learn from, learn not to repeat, even in another form. Not in any way to excuse him if he was complicit in Rendition, but the exercise of Foreign Policy always involves those doing it in dubious transactions. To take an obvious example, everyone is obliged to deal with the Chinese Government, because the potential market is so huge, and their influence on world affairs ever on the rise. This despite their human rights record, about which they are completely unapologetic and have no intention of changing. Indeed, their continued existence as a Government relies partly precisely on that abuse of human rights. Robin Cook's 'Ethical Foreign Policy' was a dream, or more accurately an only partly realisable aspiration. The thing in Foreign Policy is not whether you are engaged in actions that are wrong, but how do you limit the extent of that engagement. This is not a cynical excuse for unfettered participation in any and all abuses. It is a recognition of reality and a call for restraint. Even having the most severely limited foreign policy ('Splendid Isolation') does not free you from contamination, for several reasons. The first is that you end up commiting sins of omission, as John Major and Douglas Hurd did over former Yugoslavia and Rwanda in the early '90s. President Clinton has acknowledged his sorrow and shame over failing to act in the latter. The second is that States or foreign terrorists attack you anyway, regardless of your desire to keep well out of it. Think of the Axis Powers in the last '30s.

Aside from mulling over all that, going forward David M retains his skill as a communicator, but has a chance to discover his own more authentic voice, and his own true political identity to communicate. Again, an extremely extravagant comparison, but think of the political journey of Bobby Kennedy, another one of a set of brothers prominent in public life, over his lifetime. Because of where RFK ended up, we can forgive his origins as a hawkish Cold War warrior, among other things attacking Eisenhower during the 1960 presidential election for allowing the growth of the supposed 'missile gap' with the Soviet Union.

In sum what I am saying is, come back David, we need you !

Though whether our political-media system is mature enough to permit his re-emergence in the near future is another matter.

However any of the foregoing may be, one thing I can say with certainty is that we definitely have not heard the last of David Miliband.

Phone Hacking Latest

I was watching part of Tom Crone and Colin Myler appearing before the Culture, Media & Sport Select Committee earlier today. They were really floundering.

They came across as incredibly shifty and evasive. They were consistently giving rambling and irrelevant replies to perfectly straightforward questions. The substance of their defence of their actions was a variation on a familiar one: 'Decisions were made above us. We didn't know the full extent of what was going on'.

But the essence of the Murdochs' defence was: 'Decisions were made below us. We trusted our employees and we were betrayed'.

Everyone involved in the phone hacking scandal at The News of the World, including those from the Metropolitan Police, seems to think what had gone on and investigating it properly was someone else's responsibility. When questioned, they're all saying, 'I didn't know ... I didn't ask ...' When they're put on the spot and they might perjure themselves, they say, 'I don't recollect ... I don't remember ...' That old one !

Someone from News International and/or News Corporation must have, and therefore take, responsibility for the hacking and other illegal practices such as paying police for information, and the subsequent attempt to cover these things up.

Reflections on the Regency

I started watching Lucy Worsley's new series 'Elegance & Decadence: the Age of the Regency' on BBC 4 last night.

Seeing the Prince Regent reminded me of an obvious point; how often in the history of rulers of England you get parsimonious ones followed by profligate ones; the temperament and personality of each being reflected in the society of their time. So we could list: Henry VII / Henry VIII; Cromwell / Charles II; George III / George IV; Victoria / Edward VII; George V / Duke of Windsor. A common pattern. Clearly the extravagant ones are reacting against the strictures of their upbringing.

Much more importantly though, I only watched half the programme before I got impatient at its jolly japes, uncritical, the-Regency-at-its-own-estimation tone. After all, where did all the wealth that the Regent and the elite of society of that time were throwing about come from ?

The Regency was a very dark time indeed for many of those in this country who lived through it. On a brief survey, here are some examples.

There were the endless wars with revolutionary France that had been going on almost uninterrupted since 1793 and continued until Waterloo in 1815.

There were the agricultural workers moving to the new industrial centres, the raw beginnings of the factory system with all its injustices, including the destruction of the livelihoods of artisan families (hence the organised frame breakers in the 1810s.) It was illegal since the Combination Acts of 1799 & 1800 for working people to organise trade unions or bargain collectively to improve their conditions; the object being to prevent strikes undermining the war effort. (There is an episode of the Sharpe tv series called Sharpe's Justice which is set in Yorkshire during 1814, and within the framework of an adventure story portrays these clashes between factory owners and their workers of the time very well.)

There was colonial exploitation abroad, particularly for instance in the Atlantic slave trade, which was not prohibited in the British Empire until 1807; and slave labour on the plantations in the West Indies, which continued until 1839. Remember: it was British merchants and planters who were profiting from all this misery.

There was violent suppression by the authorities of any groups trying to get reform to representation in the Parliamentary system, most horrifically at Peterloo in 1819.

Another common and accepted abuse before and during the Regency period was the use of child soldiers, something we readily condemn in Third World conflicts today (Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia etc. etc.). During these particular days of Britannia's greatness you had as a normal part of a full military complement drummer boys in the Army, and powder monkeys in the Navy; these would be 10 years old and upwards.

Children also worked in the factories for unregulatedly long hours and low wages, at constant risk of serious injury. The first Factory Act to try and regulate their conditions of employment, with age and working hours restrictions and so on, came only in 1802. It did not provide for inspections and was widely ignored.

All in all, the Regency was not such a pretty picture to the majority of those living through it.

Now I realise that the programme was deliberately light-hearted and not meant to look at the things I mention above. Nor to be fair do I know whether they were raised later in the programme, or are raised later in the series, since I only as I have said watched the first half of the first one.

But my reaction to it made me reflect on something else; what a solemn Puritan I can be. And that made me reflect how the Puritan / Cavalier cleft in our political life is continuous until today from when it exploded into civil war in the 17th century. To some extent, Labour and the Conservatives still represent the different sides of that split. The Tories are more direct historical heirs of the Cavaliers of course. But if you consider the Labour Party's roots in Methodism and non-conformist Christianity generally, you can trace them by those means right back to the 17th century.