John Maynard Keynes wrote, frustrated, that leading Labour politicians of his era did not realise they are not ‘secretaries of an outworn creed … but the heirs of eternal liberalism’.
For most of Labour’s history, the party has proved Keynes’ frustrations right; partly because liberalism has another political home, partly because practical applications of our basic values tend to be so rare that we forget philosophical debates.
But if liberalism does have an immovable place in Labour’s values, it is in how we project Britain’s role in the world. Equality at home and abroad has always been Labour’s purpose, freeing people from the ravages of war and poverty. For a long time, too, it has been a value shared with the country as a whole.
Britain no longer has that desire to liberate. Instead it is gripped by inertia and self-indulgent arguments over semantics. Parliament debates whether we should use the term ‘Isis’, rather than how to defeat them. And how do we feel about the terms ‘refugee’ or ‘migrant’? Should we share photos of dead toddlers washed up on the shore?
This is a dangerous place for Britain to be in; a serious crisis of purpose. It is the sort of diminished view of ourselves that ends in a prime minister responding to scores of stranded or dead refugees by saying: ‘I don’t think there is an answer that can be achieved simply by taking more and more refugees’.
‘More and more refugees’; as though an admission that Britain is so incompetent, so incapable, of providing anything other than the extremities of all or nothing. Choosing nothing is the desperate squeak of a politician who cannot separate his own failings on immigration from the humanitarian crisis which is rolling across Europe.
Stability in Syria and the defeat of Islamic State are clearly both crucial to the long-term solution. They too require political courage: Labour has serious questions to ask itself for preventing action in Syria in the last parliament, while David Cameron must act in this one. But neither of those stand in the way of Britain rediscovering human decency and helping those who would rather risk death in escape than face near-certain death at home.
There are commendable efforts from charities and individuals organising aid donations for those trapped in Calais, and Yvette Cooper deserves credit for taking the issue on and suggesting Britain commits to taking 10,000 refugees. But we know this cannot be all our country has to offer.
Cameron is a prime minister already halfway out the door; having set his exit date, what does he have to lose? Two practical solutions from opposite ends of the political spectrum should prompt him into realising he has cover to act. First, the free-market Adam Smith Institute’s Sam Bowman made the case for a guestworker programme so that refugees can find safety and work.
And on Calais, IPPR’s Nick Pearce has written from experience about how the government can set a practical and humane course. Again, neither of these is enough – but they are a whole lot more than Cameron is doing.
The real heirs of eternal liberalism may not be those in high political office, but those who choose the water over land to free their families from war and poverty. But when our political leaders can watch barrel bombs crash into Syrian homes and, a couple of years later, dead children wash up on the shores of our European neighbours and respond by shrugging their shoulders, maybe it no longer really matters.
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Alex White is a member of Progress. He tweets @AlexWhiteUK
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“Labour has serious questions to ask itself for preventing action in Syria in the last parliament”. This really is quite extraordinary. A Labour government’s decision to go into Iraq facilitated the rise of Al Qaeda in Iraq which was itself lay the ground in many ways for the rise of ISIS. Cameron did get Britain involved in action in Libya which has led to that country becoming a war torn failed state. The Israeli occupations of Lebanon and Sinai led to the creation of Hezbollah and Hamas, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan heralded the Taliban.
Cameron has also sold weapons to Saudi Arabia. A country who used their military to put down a democratic revolt in another country, Bahrain, leading to the deaths of innocent civilians. Recent history points to intervention making things worse. Our current government has a track record of arming dictatorships who use their might to support authoritarian allies. What part of this suggests UK involvement would have made anything better? Cries of liberalism and human rights ring hollow when Labour and Conservative governments have backed regimes that have mercilessly oppressed their own people.
The second problem is that it rests on the assumption that UK military involvement would make a drastic difference in terms of firepower. The US, Canada, Turkey, Jordan, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Iran have *already* carried out extensive airstrikes across Iraq and Syria. The reality is that these airstrikes have not stopped the flow of refugees or defeated IS and the addition of UK firepower would not change that.
The Labour Party should be making the case for a diplomatic solution, taking advantage of the Iran Deal, taking a step back from escalating tensions with Russia and pushing for a road map for a democratic and Assad-free Syria. It should be building a side that promises huge re-development for Syria involving the west, Iran, Russia and the democratic Syrian opposition, including Kurdish groups.
So long as Russia and Iran feel that their interests are best served by propping up Assad, they will continue to spend money with the blood of the Syrian people. So long as the West see that their interests are best served by fighting a proxy war, they’ll continue to lose hearts and minds on the ground. So long as Arab sates see their interests in backing Sunni extremists, they’ll continue to fan sectarian tensions.
In the meantime, you are right that Cameron (and Labour) should show some leadership and lead on an EU wide solution to the refugee crisis. In fact, easing the crisis and giving shelter to the refugees would give us a useful audience from which to inform how to do approach the Syria question more broadly.
There is major humanitarian tone of difference between Cameron and Cooper in recent pronouncements on the acceptance of refugees to areas of safety (i.e. quite different of course to that of personal preference areas of perceived prosperity).
However we still have a problem of consensus of Cooper with Cameron, as far as I can see in still excepting austerity, local government cuts, freeing of schools form local control, the non -building of council houses and ‘unplanned’, economic movement by anyone in the EU who chooses it. It is easy for Cooper to have a sudden humanitarian conversion, but she needs to make an economic reality out of liberal gestures of support. Without economic growth and productive investment in the economy, she condemns accepted refugees to very difficult times. There is problems of housing and schooling. There will be difficulties in securing employment in competition to both fortune seeking ex-communist country migrants and others in a vast black market economy. The help for refugees would be so much more convincing if there was some challenge to this irresponsible, non – constraints on unreserved movement for work with subsidies for EU aspirants. Unfortunately, although she speaks more sympathetically than Cameron, she is still stuck to same the laughable ‘handbag economics’ of the Labour establishment choosing cowardly promotion of the media/Tory laughter at very moderate national investment and quantitative easing solutions of Corbyn. After all her former fellows found QE for the banks easy enough to accept when the economy (seemingly) needed it.
How would intervening against Assad in Syria have prevented the rise of ISIS in Syria? I am not opposed to military intervention per se but the situation in Syria is far more complex than this article allows for.
The US, UK. Germany and others, opposed the Syrian 2012 referendum, which facilitated (somewhat limited) political plurality. The proposals were not perfect, by any means but they did at least establish a maximum of two (7 year) terms for the President and permitted candidates from other Parties to compete for the Office.
The SNC and other rebel groups rejected this offer, after being encouraged to do so by the West. It was evident that they could not command majority support among the population, even if an election was completely free and fair, with international observers present.
Despite the fighting and with heavy rebel and external pressure, for citizens not to participate, the turnout was relatively high and a majority of the total electorate voted in favour of the proposal! The rebels, having only minority support, were encouraged to fight on, rather than build on this initial small step, towards democracy.
Unfortunately there is a tendency for Western politicians to encourage non-democratic regime change. The media are often complicit in the process, by wildly extrapolating levels of support, for a particular cause, from a relatively minor dissenting faction of the population. judging by the size of the protester demonstrations or insurrections.Two (imperfect) democracies have been recently overthrown, with EU support for a coup by very dubious Parties, with only minority support of their respective populations.
Failure to oppose Assad created ISIS. Assad allowed ISIS to develop in order better to attack the SOC/FSA who were thus fighting on 2 fronts. Read this http://www.amazon.fr/ISIS-Inside-Terror-Michael-Weiss/dp/1941393578
I should like to congratulate His Majesty King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques (that is, of Mecca and Medina), who has taken in literally no Syrian refugees whatever. Not a single, solitary one.
The flag over our Parliament was lowered to half-mast when his mass-murdering brother and predecessor died in January, and our Prime Minister dashed off to the kiss the hand of this one almost immediately. The first beheadings of the present reign occurred immediately thereafter. There have been many, many more.
We are at war in order to defend this regime. Doesn’t it make you proud? Indeed, we are at war in order to defend all of the Gulf monarchies, not one of which has taken any refugees. Send them to Dubai. Why has that fabulously rich city not already offered to take them? The rulers of the Gulf need to be confronted with the consequences of their policies.