Political reporter(wp):
Jeremy Corbyn has urged Britain to “walk the hard yards to a better way to live together on this planet” as he set out Labour’s foreign policy in an election campaign speech.
Corbyn said a Labour government would pursue what he called a “triple commitment” to defence, development and diplomacy, and seek to resolve potential conflicts through political action rather than relying on military force.
Speaking to an audience of foreign policy experts at the Chatham House thinktank in London, the Labour leader and longtime peace campaigner described how his personal views on armed conflict had been fuelled by hearing from his parents about the horrors of the second world war, and seeing graphic images of the Vietnam war.
“My generation grew up under the shadow of the cold war. On television, through the 1960s and into the 70s, the news was dominated by Vietnam. I was haunted by images of civilians fleeing chemical weapons used by the United States.
“I didn’t imagine then that nearly 50 years later we would see chemical weapons still being used against innocent civilians. What an abject failure. How is it that history keeps repeating itself?”
With Theresa May’s Conservatives painting Labour as soft on defence, party strategists are keen to avoid the perception that Corbyn would refuse to use armed force in any circumstances.
But they believe his record of opposing ill-fated military interventions, including in Iraq, will play well with many voters. He criticised what he called “regime-change wars”, many of which he said had not worked.
Corbyn reconfirmed Labour’s commitment to renewing the Trident nuclear weapon system – which was agreed by the party’s conference last September – but underlined his own personal concerns about their use.
“I am often asked if as prime minister I would order the use of nuclear weapons. It’s an extraordinary question when you think about it: would you order the indiscriminate killing of millions of people? Would you risk such extensive contamination of the planet that no life could exist across large parts of the world? It would mean world leaders had already triggered a spiral of catastrophe for humankind,” he said.
Asked to confirm whether that would mean like-for-like replacement of the four nuclear-armed submarines required to maintain a continuous at-sea deterrent, he said: “That is the decision we will inherit as a Labour government and that is what the position is.”
But he went on to say Labour would hold a defence review, which he did not want to pre-empt. “We cannot obviously decide what a review would decide or it wouldn’t be a review.”
Asked after his speech whether there were past armed conflicts he believed had been justified, Corbyn said few people would argue against the second world war. He also referred to President Dwight Eisenhower’s final television address in 1961, which warned of the “unwarranted influence by the military-industrial complex”.
He added that the world was now a more dangerous place than at the height of the cold war.
Corbyn also pledged a Labour government would immediately review the presence of troops in Estonia, as well as the UK’s role in the conflict in Syria.
The Labour leader accused the US president, Donald Trump, of recklessly escalating geopolitical tensions, including with North Korea, and criticised Theresa May for forming what he called a “coalition of risk and insecurity with Donald Trump”.
“The new US president seems determined to add to the dangers by recklessly escalating the confrontation with North Korea, unilaterally launching missile strikes on Syria, opposing President Obama’s nuclear arms deal with Iran, and backing a new nuclear arms race,” he said, suggesting that a Labour government would have a more cautious relationship with the Trump White House.
The event was an effort to get Labour’s general election campaign back on track after a chaotic two days in which a draft of the party’s manifesto was leaked wholesale to newspapers.
Corbyn was accompanied at Chatham House by key frontbench figures including the shadow attorney general, Shami Chakrabarti, and the shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry. However, the shadow defence secretary, Nia Griffith, was not present – she had earlier clashed with the Labour leadership over the drafting of the party’s manifesto.
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