Blair's shadow hangs over the Labour Party. Flickr/Centre for American Progress. Some rights reserved.
It’s a shame that the content of Ed Miliband’s recent speech to the international affairs think tank Chatham House was overshadowed by another of the tedious, manufactured rows that have characterised this election campaign. Nowhere are the actions of government more a matter of life and death than in the realm of foreign policy, a subject which has been almost entirely peripheral in the run up to polling day. There’s a reasonable possibility of Labour returning to power this week, and some scrutiny needs to be applied to how that power would be used overseas. The fact that those at the sharp end of British foreign policy don’t have a say or a vote in our election only increases the responsibility on us to push the issue up the agenda in final days before the polling stations open.
Miliband’s speech played all the right liberal mood music, on human rights, multilateralism and so on, but the recital was scattered with several missed beats and jarring notes exposing the fact that, behind the melodious rhetoric, the UK’s long-standing emphasis on military power will continue largely unabated. Doubtless Miliband and his advisers’ sincerely believe that he was laying out the principles of an enlightened foreign policy. But if he does enter Downing Street sometime in May, he appears set to carry forward Britain’s established historical tradition of making the world a more dangerous place.
