Ed Miliband on Iraq and its ‘catastrophic’ effect on Labour

by Jennifer Painter / @jenpainter

In an interview with The Guardian last night, Ed Miliband is reported to have been the first leadership contender to address the issue of the Iraq war in the campaign process.

He states:

“The combination of not giving the weapons inspectors more time, and then the weapons not being found, I think for a lot of people it led to a catastrophic loss of trust for us, and we do need to draw a line under it.”

“As we all know, the basis for going to war was on the basis of Saddam’s threat in terms of weapons of mass destruction and therefore that is why I felt the weapons inspectors should have been given more time to find out whether he had those weapons, and Hans Blix – the head of the UN weapons inspectorate – was saying that he wanted to be given more time. The basis for going to war was the threat that he posed.

The article also discusses the leadership contender’s considered resignation over the cabinet decision to proceed with a third runway at Heathrow, and his call for a third of all shadow cabinet seats to be given to women:

“I think it is a real problem that we had fantastic women ministers that could have been at the forefront of the election campaign, and were not. We should not have let it happen again.”

Read the full article here.