Rowena Mason meets up with Clare Short before her Union address to discuss her views on Tony’s war
Clare Short has always been audaciously ambitious. Her main aim since resigning from the Cabinet over Blair’s stance on Iraq: only the total global eradication of abject poverty, which, she claims, is “completely feasible given today’s technological advances.” But Short’s overall message is a bleak one. She foresees “extremely troubling times for the post-Iraq War world ahead,” yet her commitment to challenging past mistakes and working towards their correction is indomitable.
This dark, untidy, earnest woman apologises several times for her despondent subject matter, but she is determined to convey to me her fears that a chaotic, disordered Iraq in a bitterly divided Middle East is not receiving the reconstructive help that it deserves. Short is adamant that not only was the West shockingly unprepared for the rebuilding of war-torn Iraq, but that its current state of disarray would have been avoidable if the UN had been permitted to play a greater role. “The tragedy is, for the Middle East, for all of us,” she adds personally, “that Tony Blair could have dealt with the war properly, through the right channels, and he chose not to.” Only with a UN resolution would Short have supported the war, and she maintains that an adequate argument for regime change would have convinced the Security Council of the need for removing Saddam and averted the current climate of international division.
Ms Short is clearly eager to rouse public opinion into condemnation of Blair’s persistent deceptions over Iraq with her intermittent calls for his resignation. However, she is nevertheless willing to excuse his “economies with accuracy” as naivety and misjudgement of his own persuasive powers. I press her on whether she thinks he can win the next election on the proviso that spin died with Alistair Campbell’s political career and she looks at me sceptically, as if I share her party leader’s spurious optimism. “Tony Blair has recalled Peter Mandelson, the inventor of spin, since Alistair left,” she says indicatively. “They’ve said it before and they’ll say it again, but to be honest, I’m not sure Tony Blair knows how to give up spin. He’s never been without it.” Short even damningly compares the manufactured, orchestrated performances of Conservative and Labour leaders at the party conferences in recent weeks, demonstrating that Blair need not worry about having to resurrect spin when it is so clearly alive and performing.
At her own admission, Clare Short never quite fitted into Blair’s cautious and restrained Cabinet. An anomalous fiery proponent of conviction politics in the self-disciplined camp of the New Labour Army, she has courted controversy at every turn, but won respect for her allegiance to ideology rather than electability. Repeatedly asked whether these principles were compromised by her decision to stay in government during a war she classified as illegal, Short’s answer is always the same: she remained in order to make as much difference as possible to the humanitarian reconstruction of the post-war country. Devoted to her old Labour values, she is sure to propagate those views at the expense of her party and its leader if necessary.
As Minister for International Development, Short made great headway in raising Blair’s awareness of the need for “stabilising and uniting the global economy;” it was her influence which led the Prime Minister to describe Africa as “a scar on the conscience of the world.” Settling world debt and eliminating poverty are undoubtedly elusive long-term pursuits, but Short deems that there is one political situation which must be resolved before other world tensions may be alleviated. She passionately believes that the “overwhelming, glaring” priority on the foreign front is the separation of Israel and Palestine into independent states. She dismisses arguments that the situation has reached impasse with emotive calls to “stop the young from turning their buddies into bombs.” I ask her how she would best assuage the anger of Moslems who believe that their faithis being victimised by the US She hesitates a moment before clarifying, “The question is not one of religion, but injustice. Islamic and Christian teachings alike oppose war. The way to appease such accusations is to settle the Israel-Palestine dispute.”
Such straightforward judgments come naturally to Clare Short, whose tendency to speak frankly has led to a history of resignations: in 1988, over the renewal of the Prevention of Terrorism Act and in 1991 over the first Gulf War. Now she is serious about Tony Blair taking her cue and bowing down with the same dignity that she managed to retain for herself. “Tony loves adulation,” she says, as at last a glimmer of wry humour crosses her face. “He will find scrutiny unpleasant and if he hangs on, he will face a cynical and unhappy election.” In fact, she tells me that “it is the only way for Labour to correct its errors,” a fundamentally necessary sacrifice for the good of the party. Short is convinced that the public climate is ripe for rebellion. “The people are disgruntled, it is a time of change,” she says hopefully. With the same motivating force she used to detail her grand visions for a fairer world, she reiterates that the collective power of the people is the best way in which to achieve such political movement. Clare wants public dissention to make Blair go gracefully, but although she is not a woman to be gainsaid, her aspirations may again prove too ambitious for the actuality.ARCHIVE: 1st Week MT2003
Short, sharp shock
