David Miliband MP interviewed by Times columnist David Aaronovitch

Yesterday evening I went to see David Miliband MP interviewed by Times columnist David Aaronovitch in the Guardian building (Kings Place).  The event was meant to discuss left-wing historian Tony Judt, but after a few half-hearted preliminaries the discussion turned to an examination of David Miliband's political views.  Obviously in such a venue and with such a left-wing speaker (the audience all laughed when a weak quip was made about David Cameron) I felt rather out of place.

For such a large auditorium the interview was surprisingly intimate, even allowing for my position right at the back of the gallery.  In many ways it was like a play - with David Miliband in a deep leather club armchair, David Aaronovitch at right angles perched on a sofa, one of those Pinter plays with just two characters and one stage set and yet the whole of modern history, politics and ideas passes through the ether in the space of an hour.  Both David Miliband and David Aaronovitch talked with such coherent polished ease that the dialogue could have been rehearsed.

David Miliband:  "Ideas matter in politics, family, the public realm... the power of insight is important and you can tell when that is true intellect...  the abnormality of my parents' younger life, the horror and the trauma, made them want to provide security..."

David Aaronovitch quoted David Miliband quoting Tony Judt:  "the left needs to find a voice."

David Miliband:  "Ill fares the land - Judt argued for defensive social democracy, he felt we did not have sufficient pride in the achievements of twentieth-century social democracy... my take is that that's not enough otherwise the left will end up hunkering down and never advancing... people need more than a minimal safety net..."

Discussing migration:  "Two hundred million people are on the move...  the world will never be less open and less mobile than it is today... we need a politics that can cope with an inter-dependent world... I don't think the deep trends are negative ones... we are living through the biggest, fastest transfer of economic power from west to east so it's not surprising that you have more defensive politics around...  Economics, intra-Europe migration was far greater than expected, also there is a residue of the asylum versus migration issue..."

David Aaronovitch pointed out that no party is giving a prospectus on the open world.

David Miliband:  "In a sense all three of them are (by the way the assumption that the Libs are dead is wrong) - all three parties are saying they understand the world is changing... there's a protection aspect, there's an empowerment aspect, and there is a desire for more belonging... with vast numbers of voters it is not surprising that there is this dissonance..."

Discussing China:  "There are more opportunities than there are threats... the transformation of that country is extraordinary... China will be a global superpower but with a low per capita income... the danger is not that China will be over-assertive but that they will not take up their global responsibilities..."

Discussing the EU:  "Of course we should stay in the EU... regional dependence is not made redundant by the global megatrends... the referendum is a moment of peril..."

Discussing the Middle East:  "We need a twenty-three state solution (involving all the Arab world) not a two-state solution..."

Later he pointed out that the Iran nuclear issue was more about Iranian hostility to Saudi Arabia than Iranian hostility to Israel.

Note added two days later:  I have been thinking and thinking about the David Miliband interview.  There was something about it that bothered me, although for many hours I struggled to identify what this was.  And then I realised that in all the important topics that were discussed David Miliband did not once refer to individual personal freedom (and David Aaronovitch did not ask him about it).  And yet individual personal freedom is fundamental to any discussion of immigration (it keeps happening to the United Kingdom without the consent of the individuals who already live here); to China (no longer a vast slave state, but the Chinese way is not one we should relish); to the EU (the Treaties that affect every single aspect of our lives have been signed by the elite without any democratic endorsement).  The "megatrends" described with such eloquence by David Miliband have a direct impact upon the individual personal freedom of us all.  So it is strange that he did not address the issue (apart from one vague reference to "empowerment").  

Perhaps David Miliband is not all that committed to individual personal freedom?  Or perhaps he thought the concept is so fundamental that it didn't need to be spelled out, and only a duffer would even think he was not committed to it?  Even so, the omission was problematic.