Politics

William Hague’s attack on Israel is a hint of big changes to come

29 July 2006

While Dr Fox’s doubts about the government’s policy in the war on terror and the Middle East remain private, William Hague has made his own explicit. In an extraordinary Commons speech last week, he announced that Hezbollah was only ‘partly’ responsible for the Israeli campaign in Lebanon, certain aspects of which he condemned robustly as ‘disproportionate’. The shadow foreign secretary chided the Prime Minister for being seen as ‘too close’ to President George W. Bush. Ironically, it was precisely the speech that Labour MPs wanted to hear from the hapless Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary, who instead focused all her energies on avoiding a blunder.

Mr Hague is reflecting, rather than setting, a new mood in the party. The Atlanticist torch is kept very much alive by young modernisers such as Michael Gove, who this month published Celsius 7/7 (reviewed on p. 34), a book analysing the Islamist threat and making the case for interventionism. But the chorus of dissent is growing ever louder. Criticism of one of the party’s most powerful internal lobby groups, Conservative Friends of Israel, is increasingly audible. ‘They even phone up to change internal briefing documents,’ complains one shadow Cabinet member. ‘But they will find the party is becoming more balanced, and so is William.’

One can trace this shift back to the trip to Washington paid six months ago by Messrs Fox, Hague and George Osborne, the shadow chancellor — who, for now, is keeping his neocon sympathies to himself with the same caution he has shown over upfront tax cuts. During that visit Mr Hague warned that his party’s support of America would be ‘solid, but not slavish’, and voiced concern over climate change, Guantanamo Bay and the rendition of terror suspects — hardly an agenda calculated to endear him to the White House.