THE INDEPENDENT: Little wonder that foreign leaders see him as jejune while officals despair of him
Is David Miliband the most lightweight Foreign Secretary since the War? Admittedly there's strong competition for the post. From Jack Straw backwards, the history of British post-war politics has been peppered with foreign secretaries who've loved the travel and prancing about at summits but lacked the grasp of foreign circumstances and British interests to do an effective job.
Yet Miliband, in office for just over two years, has been particularly weak, even by the standards of Straw, in the extent to which he has managed to sound the wrong note at the wrong time. Whether it was making Russia's invasion of Georgia into the equivalent of the German invasion of Poland at the moment the EU was trying a more nuanced stance, issuing virtual fatwas against the Sudanese and Zimbabwean presidents to absolutely no effect whatsoever, or in adopting a continuously patronising tone towards our Continental allies, Miliband seems to have an innate ability to misjudge the situation and Britain's role in it.
Even in his intervention earlier this week on Afghanistan, Miliband got it wrong, declaring a willingness to talk to the "moderate Taliban" as if it was a new policy when it has been a US mantra for the last six months and going on to lecture the Afghan government as to how to treat their insurgents as if it was Britain's right to direct the country's internal politics. Little wonder that most foreign governments seem to regard him as jejune while some of his own officials despair of him. >>> Adrian Hamilton | Thursday, July 30, 22009
