Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

We may well ask. Many think it is a near laughing stock. Yet in politics there are more people laughing on the other side of their face than anywhere else. In fact Labour’s plight is very interesting. It is certainly in a place no political party has been before. It has a leader for whom fewer than twenty MPs voted. It is split over bombing Syria and quite a lot of other stuff. A free vote is one thing but for the Shadow Foreign Secretary to bring the House of Commons to its feet cheering and clapping (clapping used to be a mega no no) as he defies his Leader is a rather untested event. Quite what goes next is hard to predict. So instead we will this evening take stock.

Corbyn is a popular hero who gets more media coverage than any opposition leader since Thatcher shortly before she brought down the Callaghan government. He has to fight his way to his car. Public opinion does not see him as a future prime minister but they do see him as an honest and genuine person who puts principle before power. In politics today such a person is the equivalent in motoring terms of a very rare vintage Bugatti. So the fact that his oratory is a bit stumbling and his stated positions more right than real is all seen as a plus. And when you look at the figures it is not, for Corbyn, bad news. The majority of his shadow cabinet backed him (so he can boot out the defiers at will), over 70% of MPs backed him, the majority of party members backed him and the majority of the unions back him. And practically every impartial commentator who had any real knowledge of the IS phenomenon backed his position too. All in all that is not too bad at all. Maybe not a champagne moment, but a glass of something certainly.

So what has happened? Simple. Old Labour is returning. New Labour is busting apart. Soon it will break off altogether. The Oldham by-election tonight will be interesting. Only politicians will stay up, and talk a lot of nonsense in the process. In the morning when we wake up we may find that Labour have held the seat. Or we may find that its is all a bit too much for ordinary folk and they’ve decided to play safe and vote for Nigel’s man instead. That will certainly cause a storm in a few muesli bowls. Might even spill some milk. But it will have no effect on what happens in 2020.

There is no doubt that the highlight of yesterday’s long debate in the Commons was Hilary Benn’s speech. As perorations go it was perhaps the most remarkable for a generation for two reasons. First because it was a great script delivered with power fluency and emotion and second because it was against the views of the majority in his party, both in parliament and in the country. It was also a humiliation of his leader. I cannot other recall any speech being greeted by such an unparliamentary ovation.

But whilst I admire the man and his delivery, I cannot abide his conclusion. If IS is all he said it was and it is, why is he doing its bidding? Because IS has a strategy. The tactics are to kill innocent members of the public in the West by terrorist acts, but the purpose is not just to kill. It is to provoke. That is the goal. Because they know that the one thing which grows their strength and fills their coffers is revenge attacks by the West, especially bombing, because of the collateral to civilians.

So while there is no doubt that the Benn speech will be remembered long after the debate is forgotten, it is a pity that such talent and sincerity was not employed in a more enlightened cause.

No. The reason they have come to the wrong decision is that they are on the wrong road already and branching right or left makes little practical difference. It is not a matter which can be settled by phantom armies of moderate fighters, or a few more bombs, or even troops on the ground. Because what is going on in the Middle East now is not something that is ring fenced in a box of discord, which can be opened and cleaned by zapping the bugs.

It is the product of the ill conceived War on Terror which has been going on for fourteen continuous years in which bombs from the air and troops on the ground have been used in both Iraq and Afghanistan and bombs alone in Libya, leaving all these countries with serial violence, untamed insurgencies, dysfunctional governance and sectarian strife. Not only have millions of lives been ruined and unknown number of innocent civilians killed, promoting a diaspora on a biblical scale with which the West is unable to cope, but as each so called enemy is driven back, a new one pops up. Finally that mess-up is  almost without historical precedent, but is capped by the fact that the strategic aim of eliminating the terror threat has not been achieved by a country mile; indeed the threat is worse than ever.

So anyone who yesterday proposed, supported or voted for a continuation of the same pathetic mixtures,  completely lost the plot. They will, every last one of them, come to regret bitterly their failure. They felt themselves heroes but cowardice ran through the House of Commons last night like a river in flood.