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| Britain |
| Alienating one of our few friends – nice work, David Miliband |
| 2009-01-25 |
| By Rod Liddle Is David Miliband Britain’s worst-ever foreign secretary, or do you suppose his awfulness and incompetence were eclipsed by Lord Halifax? It’s a close call. In the extraordinarily tense year of 1938 Halifax was dispatched to an important meeting in Germany where, on arriving at the Berchtesgaden, he mistook a beaming Adolf Hitler for the doorman. Relations between the two countries were never quite the same after that. You would think that the moustache might have been a giveaway, that someone could have warned his lordship in advance, “Listen, mate, anyone you see with a Charlie Chaplin moustache, an extravagant side-parting and looking a bit overwrought – just don’t tip him or give him your hat, okay?” Earlier Lord Halifax had been sent to India to keep everything nice and calm and, on arrival, decided that this annoying little brown man in a white dhoti who kept cropping up everywhere was quite inconsequential, not really to be bothered with. That would be Mahatma Gandhi, then. Perhaps he mistook Gandhi for a hatstand. The journey of Halifax to high office – landed gentry, Eton, Cambridge, causes second world war – is different from that of Miliband. Although neither of them did much in the way of work before he became a politician, if we’re honest. Both were, in their different ways, born to the task of making Britain look completely ridiculous abroad. Miliband had form even before he annoyed one of the few allies Britain has left in the world – India. On a visit there last week he insisted that the government sort out the problem of Kashmir, the failure to do so being a direct cause of the murderous attacks in Mumbai, which left 195 people dead, by the Pakistan-based terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba. The Indians, who know a bit more about the problem than Banana Boy Dave, begged to differ. It is a little as if some Indian politician had arrived in London a day or two after the 7/7 bombings and said, well, Britain, serves you right – you shouldn’t have invaded Iraq, should you? I wonder how we would have responded to that. It smacked of a certain – how can I put this? – insensitivity, ignorance, gaucheness and, more to the point, arrogance. The Times of India reported that Miliband’s “tactlessness has even surprised people in the British administration” and his comments were immediately and rightly rebuffed by the Indian government, which sent a letter to our prime minister which began: “Why in Vishnu’s name did you send this smug wonk with the weird hair to see us? He can’t even hold a banana properly.” Well, it probably didn’t say quite that, but you get the gist. By the way, the terrorists who carried out the atrocities in Mumbai were a jihadist group with typically psychopathic aims which stretch well beyond Kashmir. And as it was a British administration which created the problem of Kashmir in the first place, the comments of Miliband seem doubly insensitive. Miliband has also now conceded that he “regrets” the “war against terror”. This seems to me an odd admission for someone who voted no fewer than five times in favour of its first manifestation, the illegal invasion of Iraq, unless it is accompanied by a personal apology and mea culpa, which it wasn’t. I cannot remember him attacking the war against terror before 2007, either. You cannot be a member of an administration which has energetically prosecuted this relentless aggression and suddenly decide that it was wrong all along, unless you humbly apologise and resign from office (not necessarily in that order). You are left with the suspicion that Miliband simply finds it expedient to disown the war on terror, there now being a certain shift in emphasis emanating from Washington DC. The foreign secretary was also fabulously weak in his comments about Robert Mugabe, hopelessly misjudged a challenge to the prime minister last summer, and has extreme difficulties dealing with soft fruit. Weak, tactless, arrogant, hypocritical and ill-informed. Hell, I think poor old Lord Halifax has lost his position. |
| Posted by:john frum |
| #4 The ignorant dishing it out to the really ignorant, neither of which seems in short supply in the sceptered isle these days. But, it does go to explain Miliband's handiwork - didn't know if it was misguided Obamism or clownish Bidenosity. Guess Miliband is quite on the clown side of the spectrum. |
| Posted by: Halliburton - Mysterious Conspiracy Division 2009-01-25 19:26 |
| #3 "Illegal war" is just another propaganda term that has melded seamlessly into the hive mind. |
| Posted by: Cynicism Inc 2009-01-25 15:32 |
| #2 good article til that last little "illegal invasion of Iraq" shot. Wanker. In what way was it illegal? |
| Posted by: Frank G 2009-01-25 13:15 |
| #1 The author's got that classic British touch with sarcasm, but is quite clueless on the GWOT. It's OK - like the patrician bumbler he skewers here, he'll be carried and protected by those intelligent enough to understand such things. Or will he, now ......?? |
| Posted by: Verlaine 2009-01-25 12:46 |