(Knocked up in a bored moment two months ago, and figured AH might have some fun with it):
How pacifism doomed a Prime Minister
· 2 October 2015
· From the section Magazine
Corbyn meeting anti-war protestors in 2003
For many, he’s the man who abandoned America out of naivety.
Serving as Prime Minister for six years, Jeremy Corbyn followed Neil Kinnock in vastly changing the country but his unpopular stance on Iraq has almost overridden everything else he did.
Corbyn had not been expected to even join the Cabinet and was a personal irritant for Kinnock during the Yugoslav Wars. The death of Chancellor John Smith in 1995 gave him his chance. With the Labour Party grief-stricken, Kinnock made a sweeping reshuffle aimed at reunifying the party and ending the ideological conflicts; the staunchly radical Corbyn, off the back of his Social Security Select Committee work, found himself appointed Secretary for Social Security.
This had two effects. The first was that Corbyn was effectively neutered as a radical anti-government voice and was instead consumed with ministerial work. The second was that Corbyn went from a mildly known backbencher into a famous icon of Labour politics, clashing with Conservative and media critics with increasingly firebrand speeches and making personal visits – “we have to see how the people find our work,” he told the Guardian in a visit to Manchester – to DSS facilities and families on welfare. The Sun stole the ‘Comrade Corbyn’ nickname from Private Eye and used it as their own, even as many of their readers considered him a hard-working, principled figure.
When a weary Kinnock stood down, Corbyn was the Labour left and union’s challenger to Chancellor Gordon Brown and narrowly took power. Labour’s public (though not private) unity and Corbyn’s new soft-spoken appeals to reasoned debate contrasted with the Tories’ vicious infighting, and so Labour retained their small majority. Satirists now presented Corbyn as a faux-trendy schoolteacher. His teeth were shown when he decided to end Brown’s public finance initiatives for the NHS – forcing the powerful Brown to resign – and held his nerve during the UVF’s mainland bombing campaign against the government.
If not for Al-Qaeda, Corbyn would be most famous for his large-scale NHS and welfare investments, the National Education Service, successful negotiations with Venezuela, and the eventual end of the Troubles; or, for the right, his large increase of the deficit, lack of involvement in the Kosovo genocide, the crippled relations with Israel, and failed attempts at a nuclear reduction deal with Russia.
Instead, the noted pacifist found himself on the wrong side of the public after the tragedy of September 11. Britain’s initial support for the United States erased the unease caused when Corbyn criticised Clinton’s bombing of Iraq. However, he also decided to keep Britain out of the invasion of Afghanistan; this drew sharp condemnation, with Conservative leader William Hague condemning this as “ignoring that Bin Laden isn’t interested in pacifism”. In a humiliating climb down, Defence Secretary David Clark pressured Corbyn into committing 1000 troops to the occupation.
While France’s President Chirac and Germany’s Chancellor Schröder (one of Corbyn’s closest allies) famously stood against Bush over Iraq, Corbyn found Britain’s mood far closer to that of America. The anti-war left, while vocal, were outnumbered. People felt embarrassed and angry that their country had “left America to hang”, as the Economist claimed. Kosovo came up again, which was now transformed from an event that happened ‘over there’ into a moral black mark against Britain. Zionist movements raised the spectre of his support for Palestinians, a policy most Britons had been supportive or uncaring about until the Twin Towers fell.
Corbyn’s response, harkening back to his Social Security days, was to address anti-war rallies in person. This backfired and Hague famously accused him of “addressing the choir rather than the Commons”.
Under the constant pressure, Corbyn became irritable with journalists, ministers, and at Prime Minister’s Questions, undermining his ‘schoolteacher’ image. When America and the “coalition of the willing” swiftly overthrew Saddan Hussein, it was easy to claim he’d been proven wrong. In a final roll of the dice, Corbyn held a snap election and focused the campaign on the alleged successes of the NHS and NES. Instead, Hague’s Conservatives came in with a 63% majority and immediately despatched the army to Iraq.
The occupation has caused a rethink of Corbyn’s policy. A growing number of people have argued that the death toll in Iraq – both of British servicemen and Iraqis – was unnecessary, and that the partition of the country into two sectarian ‘homelands’ and a Kurdistan was a solution to a problem the war itself had caused. Polls of Iraqis have shown that outside of the ruling elites and the sectarian true believers, they remember Corbyn for his anti-invasion stance and wish it had worked.
Despite that, Prime Minister Kendall formally stated Labour was wrong to have stayed out of Iraq in the 2013 elections. Rumours persist that this is not a stance she actually agrees with – and Foreign Secretary Blair has notably refused to say this – but one she felt necessary to regain credibility of security issues.
Corbyn himself now works for the DSS as a senior manager and still defends his Iraq policies. “Everyone knows the facts. People can make up their own minds.”
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In today's Magazine
* The ‘anthem war’ of Palestine
* Scotland rising? On the campaign trail with the devolution campaigners