Miliband condemns policy on Libya

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LABOUR leader Miliband yesterday indicted Cameron’s foreign policy in an attempt to win the support of the British bourgeoisie.

He said of PM Cameron’s foreign policy: ‘It is time to reject the small-minded isolationism that has characterised this government.

‘It is an approach that has shrunk our influence and weakened Britain.’

In a speech to an audience at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, he added that ‘we should learn from our past too, including the 2003 Iraq war’.

He indicted Cameron as a failed bourgeois leader saying: ‘David Cameron has presided over the biggest loss of influence for our country in a generation.

‘And that has happened because the government he leads has stepped away from the world, rather than confidently towards it.’

He continued: ‘Take the situation of Russia and Ukraine.

‘Was there ever a more apt symbol of Britain’s isolation and waning influence than when David Cameron was absent as the leaders of Germany and France tried to negotiate peace with President Putin?

‘And we have seen it this week with regard to the crisis unfolding in the Mediterranean.’

He admitted that ‘In Libya, Labour supported military action . . .’ and continued: ‘But since the action, the failure of post conflict planning has become obvious.

‘David Cameron was wrong to assume that Libya was a country whose institutions could simply be left to evolve and transform themselves.

‘What we have seen in Libya is that when tensions over power and resource began to emerge, they simply reinforced deep-seated ideological and ethnic fault lines in the country, meaning the hopes of the revolutionary uprisings quickly began to unravel.

‘The tragedy is this could have been anticipated.

‘It should have been avoided.

‘And Britain could have played its part in ensuring the international community stood by the people of Libya in practice, rather than standing behind the unfounded hopes of potential progress only in principle.’

He continued on the EU to state: ‘With the threat of an in/out referendum on an arbitrary timetable, no clear goals for their proposed European renegotiation, no strategy for achieving it and a governing party riven with internal divisions over our future in the EU. . .

‘All this poses a grave risk to Britain’s position in the world.’

Miliband put himself forward as the would-be saviour of British capitalism.