Ambassadors are paid to be calm and collected, but the European envoy who rang me out of the blue seemed utterly exasperated. Could I meet him and a colleague in half an hour? Yes, it was important.
The colleague turned out to be a visiting diplomat from the ambassador’s country in central Europe, and the cause of their barely suppressed fury was an encounter with David Miliband, then foreign secretary.
What they told me is suddenly relevant once again because Andy Burnham, our PM-in-waiting, is considering bringing Miliband back into government, for a second stint in that role.
The last time Miliband was foreign secretary, from 2007 to 2010, coincided with Vladimir Putin launching his first war of conquest by invading Georgia in August 2008 and occupying a fifth of that European nation.
Today, Putin is waging his third war of aggression. Ukraine is fighting for its life, with countless thousands dead and large areas of the country lying in ruins.
As all of Europe spends countless billions to rearm against the Russian threat, Miliband should not be allowed to forget that he was one of the generation of Western policymakers in office when the problem began. As the tanks burst across Georgia’s frontier almost 18 years ago, Russia’s economy was 30 per cent smaller than today, making it far easier for the West to impose punitive costs on Putin – perhaps enough to deter him from starting any more wars.
The extraordinary truth is that Miliband, as well as his fellow European foreign ministers and leaders, failed to respond with even a single economic sanction. Together, they allowed Putin to escape any real consequences for his first aggression, with tragic results for the people of Ukraine.
There is no need for hindsight to identify Miliband’s part in this terrible policy failure. My companions at the short-notice meeting back in October 2008, when I was diplomatic editor of The Telegraph, described exactly why they were so angry – and I reported their views at the time.
Miliband should not be allowed to forget that he was in office when the Russian threat began – Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
The EU’s sole retaliation for Putin’s dismemberment of Georgia was, if you can believe it, to suspend negotiations with Russia under a new “Strategic Partnership and Cooperation Agreement”.
That injunction lasted a matter of weeks before France and Germany proposed cancelling even the mildest of slaps on the wrist by allowing the talks to proceed. And Miliband had decided to go along with this. The diplomats spoke to me straight after leaving the Foreign Office, where Miliband had said that, as far as Britain was concerned, the EU’s talks with Russia could resume.
“Miliband was so strongly in favour of us from the first days of the conflict. Now, he is making a U-turn within two weeks,” said the more senior of the two, who represented a country neighbouring Russia. He wondered whether there was a connection between Miliband’s volte face and another development that might cause you to wince.
Miliband’s Cabinet colleague, a certain Lord Mandelson, had just led a four-day trade mission to Russia, going ahead with this visit barely two months after Putin’s first war of aggression.
While in Moscow as business secretary, Mandelson had said: “You have seen a desire to re-engage, to bring some thawing and hopefully in that context not only advance our economic relationship… but also to see a chance to resolve some of our political differences.”
Miliband and Mandelson sharing a laugh in 2009 – David Gadd/Sportsphoto/Allstar via Getty Images
As Mandelson spoke those conciliatory words, Putin was already breaking the ceasefire that ended the Georgia war, ignoring Russia’s obligation under the agreement to withdraw its forces to pre-war positions.
But Mandelson was happy to glide around Moscow regardless. Meanwhile, back in London, Miliband was going along with the EU dropping even its notional and theoretical penalty for Putin’s aggression.
My companions had no doubt about the consequences. “If we sell Georgia like that, we will have another war, and who will be responsible?” asked one.
That judgment was soon to be vindicated. The next Putin war followed in 2014 when Russia mounted its first invasion of Ukraine. As for who was responsible, the fair answer was that Miliband must accept a share of the blame for the failure of European decision-makers in 2008 to deter Putin from any further wars of aggression.
Miliband meeting refugees in Georgia, where Russia had invaded in August 2008 – ullstein bild via Getty Images
He might respond that, at the time, there was never a real chance of sanctioning Russia or enforcing any genuine penalties. No EU consensus for measures of that kind existed – and none could have been assembled. Nor was the US under George W Bush prepared to impose any costs on the Kremlin.
But even if other countries were not prepared to follow, there was nothing to prevent Miliband from publicly making the case or from leading. He was allowed to be right, even without enough followers, and some European countries would have backed him, including the one represented by my companions.
If sanctions were too improbable to be worth advocating, it was squarely within Britain’s power to stop the EU’s wretched negotiations on an agreement with Russia, which never made any progress anyway. That would only have required a willingness to stand up to France and Germany.
All of which raises another problem. If Miliband had made this stand, he would have needed the support of Gordon Brown, then prime minister. But the unspoken theme of his time as foreign secretary was Miliband’s constant will-he-won’t-he prevarication over whether to overthrow Brown and seize the crown.
His friend, James Purnell – apparently set to be Burnham’s chief of staff – resigned from Brown’s Cabinet in 2009, expecting Miliband to follow suit and then mount a leadership challenge. But Miliband squandered the chance and stayed on as foreign secretary.
Miliband had been expected to try and replace Gordon Brown as PM – Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
If he was daunted by the internal politics of the Labour Party, it was perhaps too much to expect him to confront Putin’s aggression.
But there was one step that Miliband could have taken that was within his prerogative. In 2006, a former Russian intelligence officer, Alexander Litvinenko, was murdered in London by two of Putin’s agents armed with radioactive polonium. Miliband’s response in 2007 was to expel four Russian diplomats from their embassy in London. Just four, out of more than 100.
How successful that was in deterring Putin from seeking to assassinate his enemies on British soil using lethal substances might be judged by the fact that, in 2018, two more Russian agents tried to kill Sergei Skripal, another ex-spy, with Novichok nerve agent in Salisbury.
By then, I was working in the Foreign Office, and the starting point of the Government’s response was that Miliband’s expulsion of four diplomats had been inadequate – and the response had to be far tougher this time.
So Theresa May, prime minister at the time, and Boris Johnson, as foreign secretary, kicked out 23 Russian officials and persuaded another 28 countries to evict a further 130, amounting to what was then the biggest coordinated expulsion of Russian diplomats in history.
Who knows whether this would have been necessary if Miliband’s response to Litvinenko’s murder had been tougher?
The Salisbury poisoning saw a nerve agent used on British soil to try and kill Sergei Skripal – Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images
In fairness to Miliband, there were no other policy errors on this scale during his three years as foreign secretary. British troops were then fighting in both Iraq and Afghanistan – the interventions predated his time in office, absolving him of responsibility – so he devoted much time to each country, with little effect, either for better or worse.
Elsewhere, he offended India in 2009 by suggesting that the conflict in the disputed territory of Kashmir was one motivation for terrorist attacks in Indian cities. And he provoked domestic criticism by saying, in the context of the campaign against apartheid South Africa, that there could be “circumstances” in which terrorism was both “justified” and “effective”.
Miliband made preventing climate change a priority for British foreign policy, which endeared him to diplomats and campaigners, though whether the global climate ever noticed seems unlikely.
But he was in office when Russian aggression first became a grave threat. Alongside his contemporaries, Miliband had a chance to act when action would have been far simpler and more effective than today. He and his generation of European foreign ministers demonstrably failed, or perhaps never tried.
The outcome is that Putin concluded that he could get away with trying to destroy Europe’s second-largest country. The punitive sanctions Europe is now applying would have had infinitely greater effect in 2008, when Putin began his first invasion as prime minister and de facto leader of a far weaker Russia.
I do not question Miliband’s decency as a human being. I do question his judgment and ability. It’s hard to imagine a more serious indictment of a foreign secretary than being among those whose lack of foresight opened the way for Europe’s bloodiest war since 1945.
My companions back in 2008 saw what was coming and realised, at the time, the errors of Miliband’s policy. Is it too much to expect him to do the same today? Might he possess the humility to see that he should not return to the job in which he so manifestly failed?