‘If Brown pulls a stunt over Iraq...’

James Forsyth

30 May 2007

James Forsyth talks to insiders in Washington and London about the biggest dilemma facing the next Prime Minister — and finds that, as much as Brown might like to break free of an unpopular conflict, his options are severely limited

And yet... the likelihood is still that Brown will not perform a violent about-turn. He was, after all, far more publicly supportive of action in Iraq than in Kosovo, and Robin Cook’s diaries show that he lent Blair crucial support in Cabinet in the run-up to the war. As Cook records, at the Cabinet meeting five days before the final vote in Parliament on Iraq, ‘Gordon launched a long and passionate statement of support for Tony’s strategy.’ The ‘yes’ he laconically uttered during the 2005 campaign when asked if he agreed with the way Blair handled Iraq was as accurate as it was terse; Brown was a supporter of the war in both word and deed.

Above all, though, he is an instinctively cautious politician; his decision to give the Bank of England independence is so memorable precisely because it stands out as an act of daring in Brown’s record. Pulling troops out of Iraq would make him responsible for what happened next; and withdrawal by the Coalition would almost certainly be followed by genocidal violence. It would in all likelihood spark a regional war, with the Saudis moving in to protect their Sunni co-religionists from Iranian-backed Shiite death squads, and the Turks trying to prevent the emergence of an independent Kurdistan. Brown is hardly likely to want to be even partly responsible for that. Forcing Bush to admit defeat would not look so clever following the ‘Srebrenica moment’ that would almost inevitably follow.

All the same, Brown has wiggle room. This isn’t Brown’s war in the same way that it is Blair’s. A concession from Brown that things have not gone as planned is not met with the same vicious raspberry that Blair receives for making the same point. Brown can execute a shift in strategy more easily and more gracefully than Blair ever could.