The Warsi Resignation and the Gaza Excuse

I was not at all sur­prised when I first heard that Baroness War­si has ten­dered her res­ig­na­tion. After all, she had been demot­ed in the last gov­ern­ment re-shuf­fle and over-looked for pro­mo­tion in the recent re-shuf­fle whilst oth­er female MPs did get pro­mot­ed. Rumours of her being sacked have also been cir­cu­lat­ing for a while and numer­ous Con­ser­v­a­tive MPs have com­ment­ed on her incom­pe­tence and unsuit­abil­i­ty for senior posts.

How­ev­er, I was sur­prised to learn that she used the Gaza issue as an excuse to resign and even more sur­prised that most peo­ple actu­al­ly fell for it. In her res­ig­na­tion let­ter, she claimed the British government’s pol­i­cy towards the Israeli offen­sive in Gaza was “moral­ly inde­fen­si­ble” and could lead to the rad­i­cal­i­sa­tion of British Mus­lims. There are a num­ber of rea­sons why I found this cyn­i­cal exploita­tion of the Gaza issue for per­son­al and pet­ty polit­i­cal gain hard to fath­om.

First­ly, the British gov­ern­ment doesn’t have much of a pol­i­cy towards Israel-Pales­tine these days, or much of a coher­ent pol­i­cy towards oth­er con­flicts in the region. We are liv­ing through an era of declin­ing British influ­ence on the glob­al stage, hence short of issu­ing a few strong­ly word­ed state­ments and promis­ing to review rela­tions and trade agree­ments, there is lit­tle more Britain can do. Israel does not rely on Britain for aid or for imports and can man­age with­out our diplo­mat­ic sup­port too.

Sec­ond­ly, a ten­ta­tive cease­fire has now been agreed and de-esca­la­tion of the con­flict is on the hori­zon, so it seems an odd time to resign, espe­cial­ly since her only gripe seems to be that gov­ern­ment con­dem­na­tions weren’t harsh enough. Sure­ly if she cared about Gaza that much she would be aware that she has more chance of influ­enc­ing gov­ern­ment state­ments from with­in the cab­i­net rather than from the back­bench­es. She was also free to issue her own strong state­ments as a gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tive, which she did using Twit­ter.

Third­ly, War­si sat in gov­ern­ment at a time when our response to the civ­il war in Syr­ia, which has claimed over 160,000 lives, has also been inad­e­quate whilst we have done very lit­tle to pre­vent the rise of ISIS in Iraq which has now killed thou­sands of Shia and Sun­ni Mus­lims as well as non-Mus­lim minor­i­ty groups. This is also a gov­ern­ment that has done very lit­tle about the plight of Rohingya Mus­lims in Bur­ma, Uighur Mus­lims in Chi­na and recent civ­il strife in Libya. At the same time it has increased aid to a Pak­istani gov­ern­ment that is ignor­ing tar­get­ed assas­si­na­tion cam­paigns against Shias, Ahmadis and Chris­tians whilst wag­ing mil­i­tary cam­paigns in Baluchis­tan and the FATA region. This is not whataboutery, it is an attempt to frame her Gaza excuse in a much broad­er con­text of gov­ern­ment inac­tion and inad­e­qua­cy over a range of for­eign pol­i­cy issues that did seem to affect her com­mit­ment to the gov­ern­ment.

Fourth­ly, War­si worked in the Depart­ment for Com­mu­ni­ties and Local Gov­ern­ment which was tasked with devel­op­ing a counter-extrem­ism strat­e­gy. In spite of offer­ing to deliv­er one three years ago, this depart­ment has done very lit­tle to pro­duce such a strat­e­gy and lit­tle in the way of counter-extrem­ism work. There­fore, one can be for­giv­en for treat­ing her con­cerns about rad­i­cal­i­sa­tion with a lit­tle scep­ti­cism.
Whilst the British gov­ern­ment could have been more crit­i­cal about events in Gaza, it is clear to me that her depar­ture also owes much to her resent­ment over her stalled min­is­te­r­i­al career. Accord­ing to Con­ser­v­a­tive insid­er Paul Good­man:
[block­quote style=“2”]“It would have been clear long before the reshuf­fle that the War­si exper­i­ment had failed: her removal as Chair­man may have marked the point of no return. It is no secret that some near the top of the Par­ty want­ed a solu­tion last month that would have been best for all con­cerned – name­ly, for War­si to leave the Gov­ern­ment then. Such a move would have avoid­ed today’s res­ig­na­tion. But Cameron would have felt him­self in no posi­tion to act. War­si hasn’t denied claims that she is keep­ing a diary. He will have feared that he would be damned, were she dis­missed, by pre-elec­tion pub­li­ca­tion unfair­ly claim­ing that his lead­er­ship is taint­ed by tokenism and anti-Mus­lim prej­u­dice. The irony is that he is now open to exact­ly this pos­si­bil­i­ty. He has been brought to a place to which his own deci­sions have tak­en him.”[/blockquote]

Fol­low­ers of the South Asian polit­i­cal scene would per­haps be famil­iar with this kind of sly and manip­u­la­tive polit­i­cal manoeu­vring that sad­ly char­ac­teris­es every­thing War­si does. There are no sacred cows as far as she is con­cerned and even the suf­fer­ing of the poor Pales­tini­ans can be instru­men­talised for the sake of her fledg­ing career.

Rather than being a role-mod­el she has intro­duced a slice of cor­rupt and men­da­cious South Asian pol­i­tics to the UK and we are all much worse off as a con­se­quence.