Ten years later, the political classes at last begin to move on

It was another bloody, horrible week for Syria. Imagine having your country’s future debated endlessly in the world’s media, with pundits weighing up when and how seriously you are about to be attacked. Meanwhile the chaos and bombings continue. And this when 100,000 of your fellow countrymen and women are already dead, and two million Syrians – half of them children – are refugees. Imagine if almost a tenth of the UK population had decided to flee in this way. Douglas Alexander was right to observe on the Marr show yesterday that “I don’t think anybody can be proud of how the international community has failed Syria over the last two and a half years”.

Delay over possible military intervention appals and infuriates some. Hyperbolical statements over the meaning of last Thursday’s votes in the House of Commons are made. And it seems almost tasteless, and certainly parochial, to consider the implications for British politics when it is Syria’s and the Middle East’s future that is at stake.

Yet “all politics is local” (Tip O’Neill). And it is not self-indulgent to discuss Britain’s role – or non-role – in these matters, and what it means for us here. Which is why I would argue that, while it was a terrible week for Syria, it was potentially quite a good week for the UK.

Lord [Peter] Hennessy likes to remind us of a quote usually attributed to Mark Twain: “History does not repeat itself, but it sometimes rhymes”. A recurring question in last week’s debate was which previous crisis the current one most resembles. But that was not a very good question to ask. As Andrew Campbell, Sydney Finkelstein and Jo Whitehead argued in their book Think Again (2009), when we are in a new situation, but the unfamiliar appears familiar, we may think we recognise something we do not. This is the problem of misleading experiences. The current situation in Syria is unique and, one could add, probably uniquely complicated.

But when Ed Miliband talks about “learning the lessons of Iraq” he is not, I think, suggesting that the current situation is just like 2002/3. He is rather recognising that there is unfinished business from 10 years ago, that there are lingering feelings of scepticism (and worse) towards politicians and the political process itself, which continue to harm public life in our country. Backbenchers reflected what opinion polls seem to be telling us – that there is weariness about war and doubts about the effectiveness of intervention. And in spite of all the previous enquiries, and in advance of Chilcot, it is still felt that a true reckoning on Iraq has not taken place. Hence the public’s nervousness and reluctance to support military action. After Thursday night this truth could not be denied any longer. “The vote in parliament finally internalised all the lessons of Iraq for Britain’s political classes,” as Peter Beaumont put it in The Observer yesterday.

David Cameron’s volte-face – from persuasive and forceful advocate of at least the possibility of military intervention, to a figure guaranteeing at the despatch box that Britain would definitely play no part in any such intervention – was rapid indeed. He answered a question that had not been put to him in Miliband’s point of order after the results of the votes were in. It was the final humiliation for Cameron in what had been a dreadful week for him. At this moment he was behaving, I fear, more like a crisis managing PR executive than a Prime Minister, trying to shut down a story by making a decisive lurch in a completely new direction.

The short term political fix to rule out British involvement in any attack may temporarily suit both front benches, but it will be hard to sustain if the Assad regime is seen to be guilty of further atrocities. Labour’s motion did accept that military intervention might be necessary and justified. At this volatile moment we should take any assertion that the government’s position will not change with a generous ladle of salt.

Because Britain is not, I think, “turning its back” on the world. I do not think our “moral compass” is faulty. I think rather that our politics are, and have been, unhealthy for quite a long time. The journey back to something healthier began, finally, last Thursday night.

Which is why last week was, potentially, a good one for this country.