Ed Miliband and Dame Emily Thornberry have claimed that Labour’s policy on Israel is influencing other countries, with both insisting Britain has the power to shape events in the Middle East.
Speaking at separate events at Labour’s conference in Liverpool, the Foreign Secretary, and the chair of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, argued that Britain should be more confident about its place in the world.
Miliband said the government’s action on the West Bank had prompted other countries to act. Thornberry, meanwhile, pointed to Britain’s colonial history, telling a fringe event: “One hundred years ago, we had a mandate. An awful lot of the mess is down to us.”
In his conference speech on Monday, Miliband said the UK’s decision to act on the West Bank had “mobilised the international community, country after country.”
“This is how to make change happen in today’s world,” he added, to applause. “Doing what is right and galvanising others to act too.”
The Foreign Secretary also had a message for activists on Palestine: “I want to say to the millions of people in this country and indeed elsewhere who have been moved and outraged by the plight of the Palestinian people: we hear you. You were right.”
Speaking the previous evening, Miliband said Labour should be proud of its progressive values, crediting Prime Minister Andy Burnham with his project to “end forty years of a neoliberalism.”
“In my view, the world needs the values of progressives and the Labour Party more than ever,” he said, before speaking about his parents, Jewish refugees who came to the UK fleeing the Nazis.
Noting Britain’s role after the Second World War in establishing the United Nations, the Convention on Human Rights and holding the Nazis accountable for their crimes, he said, “That was about a set of values of multilateralism, democracy, the rule of law.”
Two months into the job, the Foreign Secretary said he did not believe Britain was powerless to influence events. Anyone wanting to understand the government’s approach to foreign policy should “look at what we've done in Israel and Palestine.”
“We were not willing to be witnesses to suffering,” he said.
Miliband named France and Canada as countries Britain had encouraged to act against the West Bank, also pointing to Norway, the Netherlands, Spain and Ireland.
He dismissed suggestions that an emphasis on values came at the expense of British interests.
“Now, some people will tell you: this value stuff is all very well, but it should be about our interests. I say our values and our interests are aligned.”
Miliband spoke about his mother, Marion Kozak, who died in May, and said someone had described her outlook as “a resilient idealism”, a phrase he said he appreciated.
For progressives, he said, resilience meant getting back up after being knocked down, while idealism meant holding onto the belief that things can change for the better.
“We believe we can change the country and the world for the better,” he said.
Thornberry echoed his confidence in Britain’s influence at another conference event, where she called for “an ethical foreign policy”, which should become “just like doing things ethically at home”.
The former shadow foreign secretary said the Foreign Office had “a brain to trust, it has resource, it has respect and we have authority”, but that Britain sometimes underplayed its influence.
“Part of the reason that we don't understand it is because we don't understand history. If we just taught a bit more about colonial history in our schools, we would understand that our fingerprints are all over the Middle East, and that is not necessarily good news, but it does mean we do have long-standing associations and friendships with people in that region, and we can have power.”
She told the audience: “I really feel that Britain is so important. One hundred years ago, we had a mandate. An awful lot of the mess is down to us.”
Thornberry was blunt about the prospects for the American 20-point plan.
“The American plan is dead,” she said.
Britain, she said, needs to “start working towards what is justice for the Palestinians and how are we going to get there?”
Pointing to elections approaching in Israel and the US midterms, Thornberry cautioned against expecting a liberal Knesset.
“It's not going to be a great liberal government, nobody is kidding themselves, but we need something better than what we’ve got at the moment. But then we need to be ready to kind of push forward,” she said.
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