Lord West of Spithead
Main Page: Lord West of Spithead (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord West of Spithead's debates with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
(8 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord West of Spithead (Lab)
My Lords, civil wars are dreadful. We lost 800,000 in the English Civil War. To put that in context, that would be 9.1 million people killed if we had a civil war like that today. UK policy has prolonged the Syrian war. It has failed. It needs a rethink. Assad is loathsome, yes, but he is a fact of life on the ground. The other players are just as bad. There are no good guys in this sort of situation. At least Assad’s regime was secular. Our failure has allowed the Russians to become the powerbrokers in the region. We absolutely must change our policy or the war will go on and people will die.