foreign policy

Ralph Miliband on Labour’s last year in opposition

But that was in 1963, sixty years ago. Due to some personal reappraisals of my politics, I have been looking at the writing of Ralph Miliband and was pointed at an article he wrote in the run up to the 1964 election, called “If Labour wins”, republished in the New Left Review. I found it worth reading to observe the parallels between then and now. Wilson’s Labour were leading in the polls, the Tories had suffered the setbacks of Suez, and the Profumo affair and replaced a popular and powerful leader with a patrician land owner who was not even an MP arguable a stalemate choice between the then two leading Tory candidates.

This article contains a number of quotes from the article, as they speak for themselves, although of course I can’t help but comment. I have collected the quotes and comments into pieces on culture and comedy, economics, foreign affairs, corruption, campaigning and hope and the Labour left. … …

Labour and Foreign Policy

I have just done the Labour List survey on Labour’s foreign policy advertised and written by the Labour Foreign Policy Group (Who they? Ed). I note that on their question on Brexit, they repeat the political trick used in the corrupted referendum, Do support the Leadership’s attempts to move on and make Brexit work or should we rejoin the Customs Union and Single Market or the EU, or just satisfy ourselves with a ‘closer relationship’.

I believe we need to re-join the Customs Union and Single Market, to alleviate the economic damage caused by the increased trade friction and this is a closer relationship with the EU. I also believe we should re-acquire our political rights i.e. rejoin. The Labour Leadership have a fantasy that the Tories hard Brexit can be fixed, and we can now see the beginnings of the Tories phase III, the repeal of the Working Time Directive, revoking the Banker’s bonus cap and the restarting of fracking. Wake up, we have an equally unprincipled Prime Minister who is an effective servant of the ERG and the UKIP entryists.

With respect to the survey, I wanted to vote for all three ‘No’s but couldn’t as it was a radio button widget answer. This is how they win, it’s called divide and rule and this is why the PR campaign won’t talk about systems until the principle is agreed.

I also said with respect to supporting the Ukraine that Labour should ensure that Russian money is expelled from UK politics and while the Tories and Leave campaigns are the obvious first port of call, Labour needs to make sure its own hands and the hands of its parliamentarians are clean!

I think my first principles would be that a Labour Government must promote democracy and the rule of law at home and abroad, democracies don’t war with each other, …

Tanks

I went to the Tank Museum yesterday and took some pictures.

It was interesting to visit the the week following the fall of Kabul; it makes at least one of the exhibits look a bit vainglorious. It also reminds me that I didn’t finish my story of the future of the Royal Armoured Corps from Boris’ defence review. It all makes me wonder about whether NATO can survive, and yet again, whether in areas of defence policy we see another dimension of the stupidity of Brexit.

There’s more to learn; on one slide they observe how the Army is always preparing for the last war. Reinforcing that I note that Tanks were invented during WWI in a Navy project, that like so many stories, the adoption in this case of the Tank was adopted by odd balls and that their was significant opposition bypowerul conservative (not Tory) factions in the Army, to the extent that during WW2 the Army fired Major General Hobart, and had to bring him back. Hobart, was not born into a military family and was assigned to the Royal Engineers; he became the Deputy Director of Staff Duties (Armoured Fighting Vehicles), he later became Director of Military Training and was the founder of the 7th Armoured Division, the Desert Rats. There are many more examples of the slow adoption by the Army of the necessary tactics and technology, perhaps I’ll look them up and write something, if its not been done (I am sure it has).

As one walks in, the first exhibit talks about the design trilemma, of armour, firepower and mobility, a theme they revisit in commenting on a number of exhibits but if one recognises that the best tanks of the WWII were the US designed Sherman and Soviet T34, it becomes clear that cost, and manufacturing simplicity were also key. While tank on tank the allied tanks were inferior to their opponents, the allied forces had more than enough because they were simpler to make by design and the allied manufacturing capability was so much greater. …

Labour’s next leader, economics, defence and the mandate

In the dying days of Labour’s Leadership selection, the key issues remain those of economics & strategy, but also unfortunately now one of mandate.

The debate on economics has come to be between Cooper and Corbyn. Demanding credibility is not an economic policy and so we can ignore Kendall & Burnham. I summarise the other’s two positions below and conclude that Corbyn’s economic manifesto is not just a shopping list of desirable reforms, they are a single set of reinforcing measures to fix and rebuild the economy so it works in the interests of the majority of people.

This was meant to be a short blog, emphasising the economy and virtuously circular, self reinforcing nature of Corbyn’s programme, but I also take the opportunity to look at the defence and foreign policy debate and conclude with some comments on the election process itself and Labour’s future.

I am glad I voted for Jeremy Corbyn, but I am not a Corbynista, I am Real Labour. …

Ed does Foreign Policy

Today, Ed Miliband spoke on Foreign Policy at Chatham House. He spoke of the result of Cameron’s and his government’s paralysis that the UK was losing influence around the world and that through lack of planning for post military support, Libya was close to becoming a failed state.

He argued that Labour would re-engage with the international institutions, including the EU. He empasised Cameron’s retreat from global leadership, which started on day 1, when he defined British interests solely as trade interests and a narrrow amoral view he has carried on throughout the administration as he seeks to appease UKIP and his own right wing.

This is a storify I made at the time and have transferred it to this blog and published as at the date created. …