Hilary Benn’s speech was a victory of style over substance

Shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn made what was, by widespread consent, an extremely powerful speech in support of bombing ISIS targets in Syria to conclude the marathon Commons debate on Wednesday.

According to most parliamentarians, it was one of the great speeches of recent times, and Benn junior has been lauded by commentators across the political spectrum – particularly in the right-wing press – for his stirring efforts.

And his evocation of Labour’s internationalist traditions in support of military action against ISIS “fascism” has marked him out in some quarters as the party’s leader in waiting.

But for all his craft, the drama and his obvious betrayal of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, Hilary Benn’s speech failed to answer some pretty basic questions.

Benn failed to give any idea as to what would happen after the bombing stops. He didn’t give us a clue as to what the bombing would actually achieve, other than it would hider the free movement of ISIS fighters.

He didn’t acknowledge any misjudgement in supporting Tony Blair’s ill-conceived war in Iraq – a war that created the conditions under which ISIS would eventually thrive.

If ever there is an illustration of how the British political establishment can be so mesmerised by style over substance, then this is surely it.

Of course, the right-wing press lapped it up, particularly Dan Hodges in The Daily Terrorist – sorry, Telegraph – who described Benn as not only a real Labour leader, but as a future prime minister.

Such hyperbole is par for the course: The Terrorist will take any and every opportunity to undermine Corbyn. But even some on the Left praised it as a powerful, impassioned and intellectually rigorous performance akin to Robin Cook’s speech in opposition to the Iraq war in 2003.

However, by alluding to Britain’s comparatively distant victory over fascism in Europe, instead of its recent role in the Middle East, Benn seems to be attempting to claim ownership of Labour’s democratic traditions for himself and joined the media’s routine rubbishing of Corbyn.

In doing so, the shadow foreign secretary seems to have turned his back on the political inheritance from his own father. Tony Benn believed that those who fail to understand their mistakes are fated to repeat them. It seems his son is at risk of doing just that.

In voting with David Cameron, Benn junior ignored the failure of post-war reconstruction and state-building in Iraq that created the power vacuum into which ISIS poured. Put in those terms, his talk of humanitarianism and international solidarity seems horribly naïve. It’s a backstory that damns his analysis.

No one disagrees that ISIS is a murderous blot on the face of humanity, but Hilary Benn avoided any honest reflection on how it came into being and the wider agenda of Western involvement in the Middle East.

It can easily be argued, for instance, that ISIS is a product of Western policy – and by Western, I primarily mean the US and its closest allies, such as the UK. Hilary Benn has a track record of supporting that policy from the moment he supported Blair’s war in Iraq.

Only occasionally does the West take military action where it has no underlying strategic interest. But the very strong suspicion is that the US has not bombed ISIS effectively over the last year because it was happy for an insurgency to destroy the Assad regime.

So while the West does not condone Daesh’s enforcement of sex slavery, the dumping of older, less sexually-interesting women in mass graves, or the savage murder of anyone that isn’t as mad as it is, the terror and disruption ISIS spread across Syria seemed to serve a ‘useful’ purpose.

Even after it was obvious that ISIS had taken American munitions and military equipment that its forces had left behind in Iraq, the US kept funding, training and arming the anti-Assed Free Syrian Army. But most of the money and weaponry the US has supplied it over the last year have ended up in ISIS’ hands, along with the fighters who defected.

So what is the West’s underlying purpose here? Well, the cynics among us might put it this way: which Middle Eastern nation has the largest unexploited oilfield? Answer: Iraq. Which Middle Eastern nation has the second-largest unexploited oilfield? Answer: Syria. What links these two nations, other than a common border? Answer: the West has destabilised both.

Assad is a brutal dictator – no one disputes that. But the West tends to ignore the grotesque human rights abuses of its strategic partners, a point that Robin Cook made in his resignation speech. Saudi Arabia and Israel are given a relatively free ride. In fact, Hilary Benn recently criticised the BDS movement against Israel’s theft and genocide. So much for internationalism and the fight against fascism.

So, it would appear that Hilary Benn is happy for Britain to wage yet another ill-defined, probably unending, morally-dubious war that has at its root the Western need for oil, a topic that his father was often very exercised about, and protecting the petrodollar. Western oil interests – and especially US oil interests – have long wanted a pliant Syrian government, but Assad wouldn’t play ball. Those interests are keen on reopening and constructing new oil pipelines across Syria to the Mediterranean coast. A regime change agenda has helped create the conditions that allowed ISIS to thrive, and now the citizens of Raqqa are paying the price.

ISIS must be destroyed, but Britain’s involvement as currently defined by David Cameron is unlikely to achieve this. Those who voted against the government on Wednesday are right to argue that beating ISIS must be a truly international effort that includes significant numbers on the ground from its neighbours if it is to work and be seen to be legitimate.

Until that happens, those like Hilary Benn who plant their flag on the moral high ground should be treated with suspicion. If human rights was really an issue worth fighting for, the West would be challenging the Saudis over their bombing of Yemen and their beheading of dissidents. Instead, Britain has entered another murky theatre dominated by oil and a set of warring factions that the West has helped to create. Don’t let Hilary Benn’s fine words about democratic values and internationalism persuade you otherwise.