Labour 'Leadership' - It's Iraq, Stupid

Labour’s record on the Iraq War is threatening to ­dominate the party’s contest to find a new leader, as divisions opened up yesterday between the main candidates.

Ed Balls and Ed Miliband, both former aides of Gordon Brown, identified the Tony Blair-led war in Iraq as a mistake that led to a loss of trust. Meanwhile David Miliband, the front-runner and former foreign secretary, begged his party not to make Iraq a main issue and instead to focus on the future. His plea for old wounds not to be re-opened was backed by the former health secretary, Andy Burnham, who said he believed Iraq would not become an issue in the leadership contest.

Left-wing candidate John McDonnell welcomed what he called the “road to Damascus conversion” of Balls and Ed Miliband. However, anti-war pressure groups within the party were last night planning a series of special debates that would put the war centre-stage in the leadership race. Iraq is the last thing Labour wanted to see rise to the surface. But hopes of conveniently burying the issue for a later date vanished when the main leadership candidates were forced to make their positions on the war public in response to newspaper articles on the issue.

Ed Balls, Gordon Brown’s closest political aide in the Treasury in 2003, said the war was “a mistake” and that it was “wrong”. Balls was Brown’s closest cabinet ally when the former Prime Minister told the Chilcot Inquiry two months ago that he was “not kept in the dark” and was made fully aware of all the war’s developments by the then premier, Tony Blair. Blair himself had told the inquiry he had no regrets over Iraq and would make the same decisions again. Balls, who is said to be struggling to gather the 33 nominations he needs to get on the leadership ballot paper, said: “There wasn’t the evidence to justify going to war, and in retrospect we shouldn’t have done it.'' Despite a seven-year silence (yes, that's seven years) on the issue, Balls now believes it is “very important ” that Labour admit there was no evidence to justify war in Iraq. He said that if he had been an MP at the time he would have voted for the war. But he added that, with hindsight, this would have been wrong, adding that “millions of people lost trust in us because they didn’t think we did it in the right way”.

Meanwhile, fellow leadership contender Ed Miliband, the former climate change secretary, and also a former Brown aide, said weapons inspectors in 2003 should have been given more time. Miliband was in the United States at Harvard in the run-up to the war. He was still at the Treasury when Blair was forging his close relationship with George Bush after 9/11. In the US he remained in close contact with Brown and his elder brother.

Yesterday he said the fact that weapons of mass destruction were not found had led to a lost of trust for his party. “The combination of not giving the weapons inspectors more time, and then the weapons not being found, I think for a lot of people it led to a catastrophic loss of trust for us and we do need to draw a line under it.”

However, rather than drawing a line, the leadership debate is bringing simmering resentment to the surface about how both Blair and Brown never acknowledged one of the most damaging foreign episodes in Britain’s history.

The vast majority of Labour MPs backed Blair and voted for the war. Few have since admitted the mistake.

Opposition to the war in 2003 centred on the lack of legal authority from the United Nations. Weapons inspections also pointed to Saddam Hussein not having the arsenal the US and UK claimed.

John McDonnell, who voted against the war, said that although he welcomed the comments of Balls and Miliband, he regretted that they had come so late. McDonnell – who, like Balls, is in danger of not getting the 33 nominations he needs – added: “If they and others in key positions had had the courage to stand publicly with all of us against the war at the time, we might have been able to stop it happening.” McDonnell now wants the leadership contest to address both Iraq and the war in Afghanistan. “Learning from past errors of judgment is all very well, but it is of limited benefit unless it informs our future actions,” he said. One Labour MP who asked not to be named said he questioned why Iraq was being dug up now. “Do Ed Balls and Ed Miliband believe this is a policy mistake that can be hung on the Blairites? Do they want whatever Next Labour is to be cleansed of Blair’s ghost? “We’ve just lost an election. Maybe we need to accept this won’t go away on our timetable.” New Labour, eh. Didn't you just love that bunch of wacky characters?

Sir Menzies Campbell, former LibDem leader and a leading anti-war figure inside his own party, said: “We should respect the sinner who repenteth, but it is a pity that those who now regret British involvement in the illegal war against Iraq were not more vociferous before military action took place.”