British political establishment divided over its Assad ties after Syrian regime's collapse

Former MP George Galloway among activists warning of damage to Palestinian cause

Pro-Palestinian former MP George Galloway with Syria's deposed president Bashar Al Assad in 2005. AP

Live updates: Follow the latest on Syria

Controversial former British MP George Galloway has warned people "dancing on the political grave" of Bashar Al Assad's regime that the rebel forces entering Syria's capital have dealt "a death blow to Palestinian resistance". The Baathist government was an ally of Lebanon's Hezbollah and Mr Galloway said its fate was a development of potential damage to the anti-Israel "axis of resistance".

British politicians with a history of dealings with the Syrian regime have not all stuck with the London-trained ophthalmologist through thick and thin. In a revised view of Mr Assad written before the regime's collapse, one former minister now says he wrongly took him for a moderniser.

Brooks Newmark, a former Conservative minister who met Mr Al Assad nine times between 2007 and 2011, said the Syrian people had "shown how to deal with tyrants and dictators". He writes in a new book that Mr Al Assad's crackdown on dissent had foiled hopes he was an "agent for positive change".

"Bashar was not only in denial of what was going on in his name, but like any sociopath lacked empathy for what was being perpetrated by his security forces and the military on his own people," he writes of the aftermath of the Deraa uprising in 2011. At the start of the century, Mr Assad was seen in Britain as a potential reformer when he succeeded his late father Hafez in 2000.

Former prime minister Tony Blair visited Syria in 2001 and was briefed by officials that Bashar Al Assad had reiterated a "desire for modernisation", according to declassified papers. The Syrian leader made an official visit to Britain in 2002, during which he met the late Queen Elizabeth II, but relations were put into the deep freeze after the outbreak of civil war in 2011.

Mr Galloway, who won a by-election on a pro-Gaza platform in February but lost his Rochdale seat at July's general election, said the "Western empire" had helped the former Al Qaeda affiliate Hayat Tahrir Al Sham and its leader Ahmad Al Shara, formerly known by the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed Al Jawlani, rise to power.

Past killings and atrocities by ISIS and Al Qaeda-linked forces in Syria "haunt my perception of what they might do now that they are back in control", Mr Galloway said. He said he had not visited Syria for many years and that his remarks did not "indicate any love" for the toppled Assad regime.

Craig Murray, a former British diplomat turned activist, said power had shifted "very much in favour of Israel and the United States". He said "Assad's flawed but pluralist regime" had committed human rights abuses but held together Syria's various ethnic and religious groups, while the new regime was primarily extremist. Like Mr Galloway he has previously played down allegations of chemical weapons use by Mr Al Assad's forces.

Mr Murray pointed the finger squarely at Israel as its troops mounted an offensive in south-west Syria to seize a buffer zone in the Golan Heights. "It is nothing to do with democracy, nothing to do with human rights. It’s all to do with Greater Israel and the genocide of the Palestinians," he said.

"Hezbollah has been the most effective military resistance to the creation of Greater Israel and the most effective military resistance to the genocide of the Palestinians, which genocide can now continue apace. In order to weaken Hezbollah it was necessary to take out the Assad regime."

Chris Williamson, a former Labour MP and ally of Mr Galloway, attacked UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer for having "welcomed the fall of Syria to Nato-backed, head-chopping terrorists". Mr Starmer had called for a political solution after welcoming Mr Al Assad’s departure "and the end of his brutal regime".

"The reason Starmer is supporting this collection of pitiless militants … is to help pave the way for the Greater Israel project," said Mr Williamson, who was stripped of his parliamentary pass last year over his presence on Iranian state TV. His ally Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader, has not commented on events in Syria.

Mr Corbyn's Labour opposition was accused of weakness towards Syria, with shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry causing a stir by saying in 2018 that support for Mr Al Assad had been underestimated. She said on Monday that the question of "what next" remained a concern after the Assad regime's fall.

Vanessa Beeley, a British blogger known for her pro-Assad stance, said she had left Syria amid the rebel advance as it fell into "the hands of the beguiled and the stupid". She said children were stealing guns and "sectarian hatred is seeping back ... people are terrified".

At the time of Mr Blair's early 2000s outreach to Syria, Labour minister Peter Hain told parliament in 2000 that Mr Al Assad was a leader with "a lot of vision and a modern outlook" who knew Britain well and was "well placed to lead Syria forward". Mr Al Assad's wife Asma is a London-born former investment banker.

Mr Blair's confidant Peter Mandelson visited Syria in 2001 and reported back that Mr Al Assad was an "intelligent and cultured individual" who was "looking for a fresh paradigm for his country that will rescue it from economic backwardness". He said they disagreed on the subjects of Israel, Hezbollah and Hamas.

By 2006 Mr Blair was accusing Syria and Iran of supporting terrorism and warning that they must choose whether to "come into the international community and play by the same rules as the rest of us" or to "be confronted".

Mr Newmark, who became a Conservative MP in 2005, also described a change of stance. After a first meeting in 2007, their discussions on Syria's future lasted until the 2011 demonstrations. Mr Newmark "honestly believed Bashar wanted to modernise Syria and was an agent for positive change", he writes in a chapter of The Dictators, a new book by the Conservative commentator Iain Dale.

"How wrong I was. The softly spoken mild mannered ophthalmologist with the slight lisp will go down in history as one of the most brutal dictators of the 21st century," Mr Newmark concludes.