Today will be the day that goes down in history as the end of yet another British expedition in Iraq. Let’s hope this will be the last. We all knew it would be a hard slog as soon as George Bush and Tony Blair made their announcements in April 2003 that allied forces were going to invade Iraq. I doubt any of us had the prescience to think it would last this long, cost so many lives and pounds (and dollars!) and cause so much destruction. It’s quite a shame really, because it has given undeserved fodder to those who are against humanitarian intervention; perhaps if we had put a bit more effort into planning what we would do in Iraq post-war it would have been more successful. Perhaps not: Iraq is a cultural Pandora’s box full of very strong, competing interests and ideologies. Maybe it was always inevitable that we would unleash the maelstrom that we saw, particularly in 2005/06/07 before things started to settle.

Well it’s done now, too late. Lessons learned let’s hope. British forces from today will no longer be involved in combat operations in the country. We still have a role to play in instilling best-practice in areas such as civil society, business and governance, and that’s where our resources and energy must be spent going forward. And the conditions are ripe for Iraq to become a very successful country indeed. There are billions of pounds worth of natural resources in the oil reserves, but there is also a huge amount of pent-up human resource – millions of people who want to make a good living for themselves, industrious Iraqis who will start (and indeed already have started) businesses and lead their country forward. Despite the odd bomb going off, Iraqi cities are fairly safe nowadays. In fact cities like Irbil and Basra are setting examples for the rest of the region as relatively liberal, vibrant, economic powerhouses.

And Britain has a hand in helping Iraq to help itself. During the few years following the war, organisations like the British Council had to keep a very low profile locally. This is changing though, and the BC is now helping thousands of Iraqis to learn English, and study in the UK through scholarships. British energy companies are helping Iraqis to efficiently pump the oil that fills the reserves across the country, and British expertise can be seen all over the country in projects such as the new international airport in Basra.

Politically too, we can be optimistic. Quiet are the doom-sayers who were certain that Iraq would implode, or fall apart into three countries. Major militants have put down their weapons and entered political life. Elections have come and gone, relatively peacefully. Sunnis and Shi’ites are governing together, and the much talked about Shi’ite uprising against their former Sunni masters hasn’t really happened. It turns out that whichever religious tribe you’re from, you have a half-decent chance at a positive life in modern Iraq. And there’s no Saddam Hussein and his Mukabarat (secret police) hawking in every shadow, waiting to squash you if you preached anything remotely anti-Saddam or anti-Baathist. The price paid was huge, both for Iraqis and soldiers from the various countries who were engaged in the war. The dead can’t be forgotten, but we have gotten through the worst of the trouble, and the future is bright for Iraq.

To finish off, I want to say something about the kind of interventionism that took us to Iraq (and Afghanistan, Sierra Leone and Kosovo). It may not be perfect, but it should be defended. Strong words and UN resolutions alone aren’t always enough to end repression. We in the West stand up for democracy, human rights and the rule of law, and we have to be prepared to use force to defend those who can’t stand up for themselves in the face of repressive regimes. That’s not to say that we haven’t made mistakes, and will continue to make mistakes. But whilst it’s hard to be optimistic in the fog of war, millions and millions of people, from West Africa to the Balkans to Afghanistan and Iraq, are able to live more fully, and more freely, than they did before we acted. And for all the faults and drawbacks of direct intervention, that has to make it worth fighting for.

Gordon Brown got it in the neck, more than once over the past week about the way he announced proposals to reform MPs’ expenses. He announced the wide-sweeping proposal on Downing Street’s YouTube channel. While I can undestand that the House of Commons would have preferred the Prime Minister to come to the house to make these announcements, or at the very least the PLP (Parliamentary Labour Party – the bloc of MPs in the house who are Labour), I feel that using platforms such as YouTube for important political announcements should be defended. Perhaps the MPs’ complaints are based more on jealousy and protectiveness than a fear that YouTube is undermining our parliamentary democracy.

Twice in the last two days Gordon has defended these announcements in public, both in a press conference in the Polish capital, and at Prime Minister’s Questions today (it was the first question). It’s refreshing to see that a politician like our PM, who has been in the game for so long, can feel it appropriate to defend new media in public. The truth is that these new technologies and ways of communicating are revolutionising politics. Regardless of one country’s political system, people are online now more than ever, and they expect their politicians to meet them where they are comfortable; at the moment that’s Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. I do feel that Labour has failed to fully grasp the importance of this paradigm shift, and have definitely not embraced it and placed it at the core of campaign planning.

But to hear a 58-year old Prime Minister who was lived in the Westminster village for decades sound like he actually believes YouTube is an important political tool makes me optimistic.

We in politics complain that young people aren’t engaging enough with political processes. Efforts like the Labour & Downing Street YouTube channels have opened up politics, even if it’s just a little bit. When I worked for the Party, we had PM Blair spend an hour (don’t understimate the value of an hour of a prime minister’s time!) answering questions that people had submitted via YouTube. Gordon Brown has also solicited questions through YouTube. You can be cynical, but this has allowed a number of people to engage in politics when they wouldn’t have engaged normally. This is changing politics for the better, and those people that criticised Gordon for making this announcement online have failed to understand that. It’s time to put aside pride and open up the channels of government and parliament, wholeheartedly, even if it’s uncomfortable.