Jon Bright (London, OK): It's hard not to be overwhelmingly cynical about foreign policy - so disconnected from public opinion that we regularly throw in our international lot with a figure both disastrously incompetent and nationally despised. I came to politics late: it was the Iraq war that made me take notice, and the failure of the anti-war march that made me disillusioned (21 years to get interested and less than 3 months to get cynical - New Labour always did work fast).
Everyone remembers the anti-war protest of February 2003. But one fact history often doesn't recall is that the march clashed with two of the most anticipated sporting events of the year (which were, I think, an Arsenal - Chelsea FA Cup semi-final and England playing in the six-nations).
Perhaps that sounds trivial. But I remember chafing at the fact I was missing them. And I know for a fact that there must have been many thousands of other people who had sacrificed something they really would have enjoyed to try and persuade their PM of the blindingly obvious - I saw homemade signs saying as much. My point is that on an issue of such importance we had the collective wisdom to ignore distractions and try and prevent a terrible tragedy.
David Miliband gave his first speech as Foreign Secretary at Chatham House yesterday. It was pretty much par for the course, he refused to rule anything out, promised to mix hard power with soft power (stodgy power?), to make Britain a force for ‘good' and to keep our friends close and push our enemies further away. He didn't say anything that would prevent him from endorsing the bombing of Iran some time next year, which everyone expects.
But there was one difference - the event was co-hosted with Avaaz.org, who had asked their global membership of over a million to submit questions online to the new Foreign Secretary. Miliband was fielding questions from accountants in Pakistan as well as John Snow. All part of Miliband's ‘New Foreign Policy' - he's promising to listen, to draw in think tanks, campaigning groups, and the wider public, and to make human rights part of it. It's not Robin Cook's nakedly ethical foreign policy, which apparently upset the Foreign Office mandarins and the media before my time in 1997. But - perhaps following Blair's more dangerous rhetoric - it does flash an ankle of principle to those who desire it.
In February 2003, we, and I mean we, could have saved Britain from reaping the current whirlwind. If only we had had the power. Maybe this is at the back of Miliband's mind as he promises to listen now - but I got the feeling that he, not to speak of the officials he has inherited, do not at all recognise that wisdom was in the streets and they got it wrong. Call me cynical? Let's say I am very sceptical indeed.
