Tories’ Faux Libya Outrage

What did I tell you? Earlier this week, Zelo Street reminded readers that, while we all look at the refugees leaving Libya in a desperate attempt to put the fighting there, and elsewhere in North Africa and the Middle East behind them, Young Dave and his jolly good chaps also bore some responsibility for the situation in that country, having pledged their support - then running off and leaving the Libyans to their fate.

Dave would rather you don't see this photo

And I was not the only one making the suggestion: a Telegraph leader this week - yes, that’s the paper that most slavishly supports the Tories - told “We have made the point before that the longer term solutions to this disaster include the restoration of a proper Government to Libya, from where many migrants set out and whose lawless state is partly the responsibility of the European countries who toppled Col Gaddafi”.

That would include the UK, whose Prime Minister so shamelessly paraded himself before the crowds in Benghazi, along with Nicolas Sarkozy (and no-one should need reminding what happened to him). Mil The Younger, who is making a speech on foreign policy today - that’s the area that the right-wing press has been berating him for not covering - will, however, stop short of saying Cameron has blood on his hands.

But he will say “In Libya Labour supported military action to avoid the slaughter Gaddafi threatened in Benghazi. But since the action, the failure of post-conflict planning has become obvious. David Cameron was wrong to assume that Libya’s political culture and institutions could be left to evolve and transform on their own”. He is right.

Douglas Alexander has reinforced the point: “The speech rightly highlights the loss of influence that David Cameron has overseen, and it also highlights the widely accepted failures in Libya where the international community rightly took action to prevent Benghazi being turned into a slaughterhouse and then has abjectly failed to engage in post-conflict planning. That is widely understood and recognised”.

He went on “David Cameron waded in and then walked away. What we have seen since 2011 is five different Libyan governments. There was an opportunity with the establishment of the national transitional council to get around and provide better support”. There is nothing remotely contentious in any of that. Cameron did indeed walk away.

Instead, the Tories have not even waited to allow Miliband to deliver his speech, before issuing their “pre-buttal”, claiming Miliband means Cameron “is directly responsible for the deaths of migrants in the Mediterranean”. But he didn’t say that. All that he did say was that Dave made an assumption that turned out to be wrong.

What the Tory faux outrage also fails to address is that it was the Government of which they have been the senior partner whose House of Lords spokesperson said this last October: “We do not support planned search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean … [this was] an unintended ‘pull factor’, encouraging more migrants to attempt the dangerous sea crossing and thereby leading to more tragic and unnecessary deaths”.

They didn’t need encouraging. They were desperate to escape. Now the Tories are screaming “look at the rotten lefty” rather than answer for their decisions. It happened on Dave’s watch, so it’s someone else’s fault. Pass the sick bucket.