The front-runner in the Labour party’s leadership race, Jeremy Corbyn, has voiced his opposition to any future deployment of British troops without a mandate from the United Nations.
During the last Sky News hustings of candidates before the leadership contest ends on 10 September, Corbyn said any armed intervention by British forces should be approved by the UN. “We should have stuck with the UN and given far more support to the UN. Surely we want to live in a world that is based on the rule of international law. The UN is quintessentially part of international law,” he said.
The troop deployment was one of the most detailed foreign policy discussions, in which, almost all candidates rejected the notion to deploy forces under the pretext of tackling Daesh terrorists. Corbyn indicated that he would struggle to see the circumstances in which he would agree to deploy forces.
Last month, in an interview with the Guardian, Corbyn had suggested that the deployment could be possible only in a conflict on the scale of the Second World War. He also explained how he had opposed the NATO campaign in Kosovo on the grounds that it lacked UN approval.