WHAT do Ed Miliband and President Obama have in common? Facing
short-term political problems, they have both come up with
desperate quick-fix solutions that could land them in much bigger
difficulties in the future.
The President's problems began a year ago, with a careless
remark that the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime would
cross a red line. This was the peacenik who came to office railing
against "dumb" wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The gas attack in
Damascus last month seemed to allow him no option. It left him in
the unlikely position of a bellicose hawk.
The Labour leader's problems began with a little local
difficulty over the selection of a parliamentary candidate in
Falkirk. But Ed Miliband decided to lock horns with the candidate's
sponsoring trade union, Unite. It has ended with a full-scale
conflict between him and the union leaders, whose members provide
most of the cash that bankrolls Labour's election campaigns.
It is possible, of course, that the two men wanted to end up
where they have. Perhaps President Obama buys into the Washington
geo-politics that sees the Assad regime as a proxy for its
supporters: Iran, with its nuclear ambitions, and Hezbollah, the
mortal enemy of Washing-ton's ally, Israel. Perhaps Mr Miliband
sees breaking the financial stranglehold of the unions over Labour
policy - whose support, ironically enough, was what saw him elected
leader - as the key test of his credentials as the next
generation's "moderniser".
Yet it is odd that neither of these two political leaders sought
to make the case earlier. Until the Russian President, Vladimir
Putin, rode to his unlikely rescue, President Obama appeared to be
stumbling in a direction opposed to all his instincts. Mr Miliband
appears to have been bounced into his confrontation by the Falkirk
row rather than have set out to recalibrate the relationship
between the two halves of the Labour movement with the kind of
considered policy review that could have cast light instead of
creating heat. No wonder TUC delegates were lukewarm in their
reception when he spoke at their conference on Tuesday.
There are other mystifying elements. Why did President Obama
leave it so late to seek the views of the US Congress on a military
strike? Was it because he was hoping that they would say no, and
get him off the hook that he had made for himself? If so, it was a
tactic that risked making him look foolish, since, as US
commander-in-chief, he did not need congressional permission to use
force. And why did he not offer President Assad the option earlier
of putting his chemical weapons in UN hands? He gives every
impression of making it up as he goes along.
Ditto Mr Miliband. His supporters say that he has set out a
principled position that could lose Labour a great deal of money.
So why did he float the idea without without any apparent idea of
how the new arrangements would work? And are there not more
important issues for him at a time when he is being accused of a
paucity of policies on the economy and society? The election is
just two years away, and the Tories are rallying.
There is a terrible amateurishness about it all. We need our
politics, at home and globally, to be considerably more
grown-up.