“The honest truth is that part of the support western governments offered the likes of President Mubarak was because he appeared to be a guarantor of stability in the region.
“The central assumption of the durability of long-standing and unpleasant regimes has been swept away. This change in circumstance has left many of the old orthodoxies seeming out of date and on the wrong side of history.
“It is clear that stability based on the suppression of [popular] demands is no genuine stability at all and serves neither the interests of the people of these countries nor those of the wider international community.
“Against the odds, people are bringing about extraordinary change … We must be on the right side of their struggles.”
- Ed Miliband, leader of Britain’s main opposition Labour Party. See the full text of his op-ed in The Guardian.
