Doing Nothing Has Consequences Too

Long time no write. It’s been a bleak cold winter and the spring sun has only just warmed my fingers enough to tap away at the keyboard.

There’s really only one thing in my life since last I wrote and her name is Fugee. As Harry Truman once possibly said, “if you want a friend in politics, get a dog.”

Well here she is:

Doing Nothing Has Consequences Too

Arguably my most successful day as deputy leader of the Labour Party was Sunday 16th September 2016. I remember it vividly.

The call came in at the celebration party the day before. I’d already drunk two pints of Guinness with my family and campaign team. Newly elected leader of the Labour party Jeremy Corbyn has turned down the Marr programme and wanted the newly elected deputy leader – me – to fill in. Despite my astonishment, I said yes. I hugged my mum, dad and the kids and returned to the flat to prepare. The full magnitude of Labour's uncertain future emerged out of the fog. I had no idea what Jeremy Corbyn would say on some of the country's critical issues. Here's a list of just some of them:

• The UK's nuclear deterrent

• The UK's membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO)

• Labour's position in the EU membership referendum

• Less important but still pressing was Jeremy Corbyn's view of the selection process for our councillors and MPs. The uncertainty was destabilising, and I'd received calls from anxious MPs.

I managed the interview without disaster and recommitted the Labour party to NATO without knowing Jeremy Corbyn's actual thoughts. The preparation had prompted me to request a meeting immediately afterwards to iron out concerns. Jeremy Corbyn was in the Chief Whip's office chatting with Rosie Winterton. He asked me what job in the shadow cabinet I wanted. I didn't care but wanted a small department to bid for the Chair of the party role. I explained that I wasn't there to discuss his reshuffle but needed some reassurances on a "few things". He was affable and generous with his time.

Yes, he would support the remain campaign in the EU referendum. He had no intention of revisiting the deterrent question. And critically, he was "fine" with NATO, adding as an afterthought, "I just don't want to see an Eastern expansion". I banked it as a win.

Soon after, despite the assurances, his team worked behind the scenes to undermine the party's position on the independent deterrent. They tried to secure support for anti-Trident motions at the labour party conference. At the time, the Len McCluskey led Unite union ensured that the motions never made it into policy, but it was a lesson for me. If the Labour party leader was going to give the deputy leader a misleading steer on something as fundamental as the nuclear deterrent we were heading for choppy waters.

Yet that Sunday meeting was enough to get through the first year of Jeremy Corbyn's leadership without a significant split in the parliamentary party.

As ever with Jeremy Corbyn, though, the caveats and the small print matter. I made my position on Putin and NATO very clear in the very early days of the deputy leadership election. I don't need to rehearse old arguments, but his close circle of advisers and supporters were too close to the Putin regime in Russia. In 2015, it was clear that UK foreign policy would have to change concerning Russia, even before Putin had authorised assassinations on UK soil.

Take a look at the Stop the War Statement on Ukraine. Despite missiles hitting apartment blocks, Russian tanks rolling in, and soaring death rates, it fails to condemn Putin's invasion. Yet there is Jeremy Corbyn's name, defiantly remaining at the bottom of the letter.

Corbyn's brittle embrace of factionalism has left the country in a situation where a man, who could have been our Prime Minister less than three years ago, is giving succour to the dictator who is ordering troops to overthrow a democratically elected European government. And all those people in his faction are contorting themselves to justify their previous acquiescence to Putin's illegal behaviour.

Thank heavens Keir Starmer is taking the Labour party in a new direction. In contrast to Corbyn, who was never fit to lead our country, Keir will make a great Prime Minister.

The Ukrainians Who Gave us Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide

The Ukrainian city of Lviv, formerly Lemberg, Lvov or Lwow, depending on who had control of it (Ukraine, Germany, Poland and Russia) is in the news again.

In an intelligent memoir, Philip Sands tells the story of Professor Hersch Lauterpact and Rafael Lemkin, both law faculty graduates of Lviv. The two of them played a significant role in developing the idea of crimes against humanity and genocide; concepts first used in the Nuremberg trials.

As the air raid sirens summon families to their makeshift shelters, Putin's excessive use of force against unarmed citizens may constitute the very crimes first developed by these two remarkable Ukrainians.

People hiding in a Metro station — Photo by Fotoreserg

If you get the chance to read Philippe Sands' East West Street, you will not be disappointed. I listened to it on audiobook over a single weekend. Sands explains how the case was made that states are not uniquely sovereign; that some leaders could behave with such wickedness that states should form a set of international laws that holds them to account. That he does it whilst also telling a personal detective story of his Ukrainian family, who fled both Hitler and Stalin, makes this book a literary masterpiece.

Civilian building damaged following a Russian rocket attack on the city of Kyiv — Photo by Palinchak