However, Labour should not be apologetic about its policy toward the Gaddafi regime during our time in government.
The idea with hindsight that Tony Blair was wrong to engage the Libyan regime so they renounced their weapons of mass destruction and support for terrorist groups smacks of futile isolationism masquerading as a principled foreign policy – the philosophical convergence of the Little England brigade with Stop the War. No one can doubt that a man as unhinged as Colonel Gaddafi might not use biological and chemical weapons against his own people if he had the chance. It was a Labour government’s actions that helped ensure he didn’t.
On Megrahi things are more open to debate. Gordon Brown has long maintained (and it is rumoured, has written several letters to the current government asking to be exonerated) that the decision to release the Lockerbie bomber was done at the request of the Scottish government, based on the advice of his doctors. Many suspect other motivations played their part.
So the issue of Libya has brought back some uncomfortable issues for Labour and opened lines of attack for the Conservatives and Lib Dems. But how have Ed, Douglas Alexander and the shadow team fared in holding the government to account in their first major international test?
Labour’s front bench foreign policy team had a fairly low-key start to the conflict, not managing to score any major hits of Hague and the other FCO ministers. But things began to turn for Labour, with the charge of incompetence beginning to stick and rumblings that Hague had lost his ‘mojo’.
A number of errors were committed by the foreign secretary. The first was to add fuel to the rumours that Colonel Gaddafi was in transit to Venezuela, despite the fact that this hadn’t been confirmed by intelligence. As a senior minister a lot of information is shared with you on a confidential basis, which can often be less than reliable. Hague was rightly criticised by Labour and others for publicly discussing such unverified information.
The next failure was around the competence of his department. Many Britons were stuck in Libya for days while their colleagues from France, Germany and Turkey were evacuated by their governments. Douglas Alexander rightly lambasted Hague for the fact that planes were left stranded and communications unanswered by the FCO.
The final and most controversial of all the failings was around the Special Forces mission in Eastern Libya. The operation was a spectacular blunder with a lack of co-ordination in planning via COBRA, despite sign off from the FCO and No10. The decision by MI6 officers to use Chinook helicopters to enter Libya, rather than Land Rovers (as the Special Boat Service did) alerted the nervous rebels, and ended in our special forces being captured by a group of pitchfork-wielding farmers.
The effect of this combination of stories has been to tar the government with the brush of incompetence. It is an effective strategy for Labour – and plays into a wider line of attack that David Cameron has not got a strong grip on the details or machinery of government. Ed Miliband has effectively used this at PMQs on a number of other issues from the tuition fees universities will charge to the cuts to frontline police numbers.
Labour’s shadow defence secretary and rising star, Jim Murphy, has been especially effective at putting the Government in the corner following the strategic defence review.
He has forced defence ministers to come to the Commons to explain issues such as whether frontline troops serving in Libya will be sacked on their return, and whether our forces in Afghanistan are getting the equipment they need.
Along with Liam Fox’s apparent well-publicised disquiet over the SDR Jim Murphy has successfully exploited these divisions in government, and is seeking to put pressure on the Conservative plans by holding a shadow defence review. As he put it, ‘The government’s rushed defence review hasn’t survived the first contact with world events. Senior military figures are calling on the government to rethink and revisit their rushed review. I hope the government will listen to Andrew Dorman, who has called the cuts “embarrassing” and who worryingly says cuts to Harrier and Ark Royal will impede Britain’s ability to respond militarily to crises. The government have made mistakes and some of them may be serious. While France has an aircraft carrier off the coast of Libya, Britain has one for sale online’.
So in the short-term, Labour has successfully navigated its first foreign policy test of opposition, scoring a few hits against the government without appearing opportunistic.
The next stage will be trickier, however. We need to begin to question what the government’s long-term strategy for Libya is (if it has one). Are we seeking containment, which didn’t really work with Iraq in the 1990s; regime change, which could be chaotic and costly; or are we hoping to support the rebels so that they take over (which isn’t risk free given Al Qaeda’s apparent presence in Eastern Libya)? Whatever the choices Labour will need to be clear that while we support our troops, and the government’s objectives in standing up to Gaddafi, they need to commit the military resources and diplomatic leadership to achieve them.