Miliband - the man who loves controversies

Lionel Wijesiri

One of my favourite TV characters was Mr. Bean. Years ago, it was a popular comedy series. The humour largely came from Mr. Bean’s original (and often absurd) solutions to problems and his total disregard for others when solving them, his pettiness, and occasional malevolence. At times, without laughing at his buffooneries I felt sorry for his nit-witted behaviour.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband sometimes reminds me of Mr. Bean. In many actions, there is quite a similarity between Mr. Bean and Mr. Miliband. Take, for example, Mr. Miliband’s recent visit to Sri Lanka and his somewhat arrogant behaviour. Mr Miliband was quoted by the media as saying Britain had credible information that civilians were being harmed in the Army’s artillery raids on the No-Fire Zone. What he meant by “credible” he did not specify.

Perhaps, Mr. Miliband met his Waterloo at the meeting in the form of Defence Secretary, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa - who replied that it was up to the British delegation to decide whether it should believe what a terrorist group said or what a responsible officer of a legitimate government told them.

“The choice is yours,” Rajapaksa was quoted as saying. Diplomacy apart, Mr. Miliband forgot who he was, where he was, and became somebody (in British jargon) “who talks the talk but does not walk the walk”.

This incident is not surprising because Mr. Miliband has a habit of often leaving trails of controversies when he speaks out of turn within or out of the country.

Few examples are quoted in this article.

Who is he?

Just before that, let us see who Mr. Miliband is, besides being British Foreign Secretary. David Wright Miliband MP, born on July 15, 1965 in London, studied politics at universities both in England and the US, and started his career as a policy analyst at the Institute for Public Policy Research.

At 29, he became Tony Blair’s Head of Policy whilst the Labour Party was in opposition and was a major contributor to Labour’s manifesto for the 1997 General Election which brought the party to power. Blair made him Head of the Prime Minister’s Policy Unit from 1997 to 2001.

Miliband spent the next several years in various junior ministerial posts, before becoming Environment Secretary. On the succession of Gordon Brown as Prime Minister, Miliband was promoted to Foreign Secretary, and at 41, became the youngest person to hold the position in 30 years.

He was apparently a private critic of the Iraq war, and the only person to speak out in Cabinet against Blair’s refusal to call for a ceasefire during the Lebanese war. Then again, he talked fluently about the importance of promoting democratic forces in Iran. He is also regarded as a hardliner on relations with Muslim extremists in the UK. Today, he is a key figure in the Prime Minister’s “kitchen Cabinet” and has been tipped as a future leader of his party.

Controversy No-1

Now, let us get on with the controversies. In January 2007, when Mr. Miliband was still the Environment Secretary, he told Sunday Times of UK that there was no evidence organic food is better than conventional food. He added that organic food was more of a “lifestyle choice that people can make” and there was no “conclusive evidence either way” concerning the health effects of pesticides. Mr Miliband said, “It’s only four percent of total farm produce, and I would not want to say that 96 percent of our farm produce is inferior because it’s not organic.”

A Director of Soil Association Robin Maynard - UK’s leading environmental charity promoting farming, said the Environment Secretary’s comments were “disappointing”. “It has been shown over the years that there is a difference between food produced organically and that produced using industrial methods.

It is not just a lifestyle choice in terms of the environment, organic is better for that. Mr Miliband’s own government has recognised in the past that organic food can be better for that. In fact, organic farmers get an extra payment due to this.” According to the Soil Association, organic food sales in the UK have increased by 30 percent to œ1.6 billion in the previous year.

Controversy No-2

Within few weeks of his been appointed as Foreign Secretary in mid 2007, he started making more controversial statements. Within the Cabinet, Mr. Miliband criticized the Israeli attack on Hezbollah while his Prime Minister was defending Israel.

In November 15, 2007, Mr.Miliband was humiliated by the Prime Minister when he was forced to remove pro-European passages from a speech and drop his policy initiative on European defence. Brown ordered Mr Miliband to drop explicit references to an “EU military capabilities charter”, which would have identified targets for investment, research and training.

The idea would have aligned Britain with plans from President Sarkozy of France to beef up Europe’s shared defence forces and set out a blueprint for the future deployment and equipping of troops from the 27 member states working together. However, in questions after the speech, Mr Miliband moved even more decisively away from the position of Sarkozy, who wanted a common EU defence.

The Prime Minister also insisted that Mr Miliband drop a passage mentioning Europe’s “ability to set standards for the rest of the world”, and a passage saying that Europe could become a “model power” was changed to “model regional power”.

Controversy No-3

In August 2008, Mr. Miliband was embroiled in another lobbying controversy after an energy company that had donated to his constituency party was granted planning permission for a œ200m power station.

Helius Energy gave œ4,000 to Miliband’s South Shields party when he was a Minister in John Prescott’s Department, which was responsible for planning policy. Helius subsequently hired a lobbying firm, run by Alan Donnelly, Miliband’s constituency chairman, to help win government backing for its biomass power station. The Tories and Liberal Democrats called for full disclosure of any links between Miliband and Donnelly’s clients which range from power companies, including Helius Energy, and Formula One racing.

Controversy No-4

In September 2008, David Miliband was embroiled in controversy after he was overheard telling an aide that he had toned down his Labour conference speech to avoid embarrassing Gordon Brown. The Foreign Secretary said that he had refrained from going further because he would have been accused of disloyalty. According to the BBC, Mr Miliband was overheard telling an aide: “I couldn’t have gone any further. It would have been a Heseltine moment.”

This is believed to have been a reference to the defeat of Margaret Thatcher in 1990 because MPs assumed that Michael Heseltine was waiting in the wings to take over.

Heseltine failed to succeed the Prime Minister and John Major became party leader.

Controversy No-5

On January 15, 2009 Miliband wrote an article in The Guardian linking India’s fight against terror to the Jammu and Kashmir dispute.

“...on my visit to South Asia this week, I am arguing that the best antidote to the terrorist threat in the long term is cooperation. Although I understand the current difficulties, resolution of the dispute over Kashmir would help deny extremists in the region one of their main calls to arms, and allow Pakistani authorities to focus more effectively on tackling the threat on their western borders.”

The External Affairs Ministry (MEA) of India reacted to Miliband’s article with MEA spokesperson Vishnu Prakash commenting, “Mr. Miliband is entitled to his views, which are clearly his own and are evolving. India is a free country and, even if we do not share his views, he is free to express them. However, we do not need unsolicited advice on internal issues in India like J&K.”

Miliband’s attempts to link terrorism to the Kashmir issue have not been received well in political circles even in the opposition Conservatives in Britain too who expressed apprehension that Indo-UK ties could be damaged.

A leading British newspaper also took pot-shots at the Foreign Secretary, saying, “Miliband was beginning to look as accident-prone as Mr Bean after yet another adventure backfired. After ruining his chance of the Labour leadership by grinning at the cameras while brandishing a banana, the Foreign Secretary’s visit to India was labelled a ‘disaster’ by the country’s leading politicians.”

Miliband also left some unpleasantness in the Indian establishment because of his “somewhat brash style”, according to informed sources in New Delhi. Media reports have stated that in his meetings with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Miliband’s “posture and style of talking were a little too aggressive”.

Post Script

Few months ago, two Labour backbenchers called on Gordon Brown to sack David Miliband. Bob Marshall-Andrews, (Labour for Medway) accused Mr. Miliband of “pretty contemptible politics” and said his behaviour had been “duplicitous”. Geraldine Smith (Labour for Morecambe and Lunesdale) said Mr Miliband was “trying to stir up trouble” and should get on with his job. “What has Mr. Miliband ever achieved apart from furthering his own career?” she added.

Before making his comments on policy towards Sri Lanka’s internal issues Mr. Miliband would do well to ponder some wise advice from a great predecessor. Lord Salisbury, Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister in the days of the British Empire, dispensed immense global power; but that did not mean that he liked playing about with that power. Faced with proposals for British policy that he understood to be deeply damaging to the interests of other countries, Salisbury would look his colleagues in the eye and ask simply,

“Are you really satisfied this policy is right and worth for a fight? If not, do not embark on this policy”.

Viewing this conflict from Sri Lanka’s point of view gives some interesting perspectives. The first is the absolute insanity of the West’s stoking a crisis with Sri Lanka while facing such intractable problems in the Muslim world. It is also striking that, as far as this issue is concerned, the Sri Lankan public have been shifting their alliance towards their friends in the socialist bloc, despite their traditional economic alignment to the West for decades.

It is not because they have suddenly fallen in love with the socialist bloc. It is because when it comes to international lawlessness, bullying, and aggression, they see a great difference in socialist bloc in understanding their problems in right perspective. The moralizing of Western leaders, therefore, no longer cuts much ice in Colombo, or anywhere else much outside the West itself.