Outside Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, a few volunteers from Tory central office were wearing Nicola Sturgeon masks. It was an oddly parochial approach to Ed Militant bringing a rare touch of international politics into a domestic general election, made odder by the jaundiced yellow colouring of the masks; if Sturgeon really is that ill, she will be dead from liver failure within the year.
There were also a few grumbles from some of the members inside. Chatham House prides itself on its independence and there were some objections to the word Labour having been stuck to the wooden lectern. As branding, it was hardly overkill, but rules are rules. The director, Robin Niblett, was also slightly grudging in his introduction, referring to the Labour leader as “a candidate for prime minister”. There are only two, Robin.
If Ed was unnerved by this lese-majeste, he didn’t show it. He bounced on to the stage with a wide grin and kept his tried-and-trusted hustings tics of “friends” and “let me just say this” to the barest of minimums. International relations usually scores less than zero on the campaign trail, but Ed was on Mission Statesman. He was here to show that he wouldn’t look like an out of place plasticine Wallace standing next to Barack Obama and Angela Merkel at a G7 meeting. And, by and large, it was job done. He did look the part. At times he also almost sounded it.
The Labour leader began by acknowledging that international diplomacy was a fairly thankless task, but that he could guarantee to do better at it than the Tories. This was the equivalent of pushing at an open door, seeing as David Cameron’s first global outing as prime minister consisted of insulting the neighbours of every country he visited and that his military intervention in Libya has left the country even worse off than when he started.
But Ed didn’t want to dwell on this, because he wasn’t here to score easy party political points. He was here to be a Statesman. So he quickly moved on to the irony of the prime minister campaigning to highlight the divisions between the Scots and the English within the UK on the very day he was calling for more international co-operation and “Hard-hatted multilateralism”. That’s multilateralism in the pale blue helmets of the UN peacekeeping force, presumably.
Chatham House has a rather more upmarket and academic clientele than most hustings. Friday’s included a former UK Consul, a Palestinian diplomat and someone who had been at university with Ed. “I remember you,” said Ed. “You were in the year below me.” “Actually,” came the reply, “we were in the same year.” Ed thought Statesman and tried to answer like one. “I’m sorry,” he laughed. “What are you doing now?” “Earning more than you.” You win some, you lose some. No one said diplomacy was easy.
When it came to questions from the press, there was only one topic on anyone’s minds. The Tory grumbles that Ed had only come along to blame Conservative foreign policy for the drowning of nearly a thousand migrants in the Mediterranean early in the week. “Are you saying David Cameron has blood on his hands?”
In some ways he does, of course, as it was his government that signed up to last year’s agreement to stop the search-and-rescue boat teams on the grounds they encouraged more migrants to risk the crossing. But a Statesman would never resort to such petty point-scoring at a time of tragedy.
“The traffickers have to take most of the blame,” he said statesmanly. “But the whole international community has to accept its share for not having thought through a post-conflict solution to Libya which has significantly added to the problem. And that includes David Cameron.”
Go, Statesman. When a third journalist tried to ask the same question in a slightly different way, there were even a few jeers from the Chatham House audience. That’s almost unheard of. A Statesman deserved a fair hearing. We may not have learned as much as we would have liked about how this Statesman would act on a global stage. But we had learned that he can look and sound like one.
