Most of those policies had been long proposed by ‘lefties’ anyway.

Wait a god dang cotton picking minute there, you mean by appealing to centre swing voters labour were able to win elections, form governments and enact left wing policies?

HOLY SHITBALLS!

kelvin
Full Member

It would also have happened without Labour being in power at the time.

There is absolutely no proof of that.

Yes had there been a Conservative government at the time they would almost certainly have wanted to support the US in a military adventure in the Middle East. But there was huge public opposition to war and I can’t imagine for a moment that Labour in opposition would have also not opposed war, even under Tony Blair.

Huge public oppostion, combined with Labour opposition, and the LibDems (all 56 LibDems opposed war) would have made it very difficult, if not impossible, for a Tory government to commit Britian to war.

As it was a Labour government, along with an enthusiastic Tory opposition, made going to war very easy.

I’ll remind you that in opposition Tony Blair opposed and voted against every single privatisation legislation introduced by Conservative governments, and I mean every single

johnx2
Free Member

So what would you have done, given the opportunity to topple a literally (marsh Arabs, Halabja) genocidal dictator?

It’s interesting that despite your obvious admiration for Tony Blair the one thing you agree with his critics on is that he is a liar.

Yes you are right, toppling Saddam Hussein was the aim of going to war. It had nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction. Tony Blair lied, to the British people and the world.

Not only did he deny that regime change was the aim of war but he unequivocally claimed the opposite. He very clearly stated that war was not “inevitable” and all Iraq had to do to avoid war was to allow access to UN weapons inspectors. His excuse for going to war was that Iraq had not complied.

War is a serious business which is rarely justified. Whatever the reasons for going to war it should never be based on lies.

Now you could argue that there was a strong and compelling case for launching military action to facilitate regime change in Iraq. But the mechanism for that under international law is through the United Nations. Tony Blair ultimately decided to ignore the United Nations (an organisation established precisely to resolve disputes without the need for war) because he obviously believed that the case for military intervention was too weak.

BTW Tony Blair never expressed any concern about the horrific numbers of deaths (a figure vastly greater than anything that happened in Halabja and the Mesopotamian Marshes), especially among children, international sanctions against Iraq caused. So it’s hard to believe that a man with such a close personal relationship with George Bush and the US oil lobby was primarily motivated by a deep humanitarian concern.

I’ll remind you that after invasion only the oil ministry was defended from looters, hospital were left to ransacked.

kelvin
Full Member

It would also have happened without Labour being in power at the time.

There is absolutely no proof of that.

Yes had there been a Conservative government at the time they would almost certainly have wanted to support the US in a military adventure in the Middle East. But there was huge public opposition to war and I can’t imagine for a moment that Labour in opposition would have also not opposed war, even under Tony Blair.

Huge public oppostion, combined with Labour opposition, and the LibDems (all 56 LibDems opposed war) would have made it very difficult, if not impossible, for a Tory government to commit Britian to war.

As it was a Labour government, along with an enthusiastic Tory opposition, made going to war very easy.

I’ll remind you that in opposition Tony Blair opposed and voted against every single privatisation legislation introduced by Conservative governments, and I mean every single one there were no exceptions. Once installed as prime minister he embarked on a privatistion programme. Obviously there was no opposition from the Tories so he less trouble with his privatisation than any Tory government would have had. There are other examples.

It’s not just winning elections that matters, otherwise just joining the Tories might be the easist solution. Sometimes it’s what you do in power that matters. I strongly believe that Britian might not have been involved in the Iraq War had the Tories been in government. Obviously we’ll never know.

I can’t imagine for a moment that Labour in opposition would have also not opposed war, even under Tony Blair.

Hurd kept the UK out of Kosovo. Nothing in it for us. Concentration camps in Europe ffs as gassing towns in Iraq doesn’t seem to do it for anyone. How do you feel about the Liberia intervention?

If you’re going to drag up some of the past (as a reason for I dunno, bad stuff about Starmer now?) at least get the whole picture.

While you’re at it, why not go and ask the population of Sierra Leone what they think about Tony Blair and his disastrous foreign interventions?

But…. but…. IRAQ!!!

Well John you obvious didn’t bother to read my post fully, or at least chose to ignore the point I was making.

If there was a strong case to be made for humanitarian intervention in Iraq then fine, make the case. But don’t lie and claim that you are going to war because of WMDs. Don’t lie and claim that war isn’t inevitable. Don’t lie to the British people over something as serious as going to war. Take your case for humanitarian intervention to the UN, do it properly, under international war.

What is wong with that?

Unless you think your case for military intervention isn’t strong enough.

(as a reason for I dunno, bad stuff about Starmer now?)

As far as I’m aware the reason that Tony Blair has come up on a thread about Starmer is because Starmer’s supporters on here keep bringing him up. Apparently the only thing that matters is winning elections, nothing else matters. So they keep giving Blair as an example.

If I thought the only important thing in politics was to win elections then joining the Tory Party would seem a sensible strategy.

Winning elections is obviously extremely important, but also important are your goals.

This is a joke, not an acceptable political strategy :

“Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.”

Groucho Marx

Finally, Marx and one of my favourite lines. Being wrong is not the same as lying. Anyway, I’m leaving it there.

As far as I’m aware the reason that Tony Blair has come up on a thread about Starmer is because Starmer’s supporters on here keep bringing him up. Apparently the only thing that matters is winning elections, nothing else matters. So they keep giving Blair as an example.

He’s been used as the constant bogeyman for ‘centrism (boooooo… hiss!) by our resident lefties

If you go back a page you’ll see a list of what he achieved in his three successful elections

It would appear that none of that counts for anything because he didn’t measure up to your exacting standards of idealogical purity therefore he must be condemned as an evil Tory, along with anyone else who has a more nuanced and balanced view of Labours 13 years in power.

Those years the left castigate

Everything’s relative

13 years in power achieves a damn site more than an eternity of pious, sanctimonious, judgemental, po-faced and utterly joyless idealogical purity while a Tory administration has a free reign to do what the **** it likes

If you go back a page you’ll see a list of what he achieved in his three successful elections

If you think that not incinerating brown people is “ideological purity” then you have a very low bar.

If you think that a British Government of any other flavour would have done anything different or that if the UK. Government Hadn’t gone along with it then the outcome would have been any different then you’re living in la-la-land

I find it’s best to view things through that truism rather than some lefty cloud-cuckoo-land nonsense where the British government says no so the Bush administration calls the whole thing off and ten years later the Middle East is somehow miraculously a strong stable democracy free of genocidal dictators

Seriously… what planet do you people live on?

HELLOOOOO…. this is the real world calling! Maybe you should check in once in a while, eh?

As I’ve said repeatedly…

Deal with the world as it is, rather than as you’d like it to be.

Picture yourself being the one having to make those decisions instead of the one making a placard about it in the common room

Being wrong is not the same as lying.

No of course it isn’t. But it is YOU who is calling Blair a liar when you claim that the purpose of the Iraq war was regime change. Just to remind you :

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00pxg7h

And I agree with you. Blair might be a lot of things but he is certainly not some sort of half-wit. And you would need to be a deranged half-wit to commit the UK to war against a country armed with weapons of mass destruction. Why do you think the UK has never attacked a country armed with weapons of mass destruction? Because up until now they have all had impeccable human rights records?

Blair had to be absolutely certain that Iraq didn’t have WMDs before attacking it. the deaths of thousands, if not tens of thousands, of British service personnel would certainly have scuppered his re-election prospects. We do understand what weapons of mass destruction actually means, don’t we?

As Robin Cook said in his resignation speech before parliament the decision to attack Iraq wasn’t made because Iraq was considered a threat to Britian but because it was considered extremely weak and no threat at all.

BTW you would need to be extremely gullible to believe that George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and all the others in the administration who grew rich from the oil industry, had a secret humanitarian agenda for Iraq. Do you really believe that the people who made the decision to go to war gave a monkeys about the 5000 dead Kurds in halabja?

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/rumsfeld-backed-saddam-even-after-chemical-attacks-83921.html

By all means bring up Tony Blair’s stunning victory over John Major every time someone complains about Labour aping the Tories, but please don’t attempt to re-write history.

Can any of you lot, so quick to condemn everyone, map out a credible scenario where the situation in the Middle East would be any better if ‘we’ hadn’t gone into Iraq than it is today?

Humour me with your perfect solution

Allowing genocidal dictators to carry on with their genocide, perhaps?

I’m intrigued to know how this all plays out in lefty la-la-land

Off you go…

What intrigues me to know binners, is why you haven’t got a column in the Daily Mail.

Have you considered sending them some of your material?

I’m assuming to haven’t got a column in the Daily Mail as you spend so much on here. But please correct me if I’m wrong.

Apparently I’m too right wing, and their guest editors, Len McClusky, ‘Degsie’Hatton and the restless spirit of Mussolini are not convinced of my commitment to the cause

Oh well…

They turned you down? Oh I’m sorry to hear that.

But hey, their loss is STW’s gain. How many other forums can claim to have their very own ranting swivel-eyed hyper-bollock tabloid commentator, eh?

I agree with Binners in that you need a more realistic perspective of what you need to do to actually get into power in this country and then what you can do based on what you had to do to get power. I don’t do it in such an over dramatic and Monthy Python image strewn manner though.

I stated a few pages back that I would prefer any labour government to any tory government just because I feel very sure that overall they would do things closer to what I wanted for the country.
Yes MPs are far from perfect but when an MP stands for Labour rather than Tory they are largely going to be more aligned with my thinking and wants. That is sadly the best I will get bar some uprising/revolution which in this country is never going to happen is it (again, realistic perspective)

Some joker then asked me why I believe that which I don’t think is even worth an answer.

Picture yourself being the one having to make those decisions instead of the one making a placard about it in the common room

You really do have a chip on your shoulder about those with an education. It’s not very edifying.

But your counterfactual perspective is interesting: we had to invade Iraq because Bush was going to anyway. Do you want to stop and have a think for a moment?

Allowing genocidal dictators to carry on with their genocide, perhaps?

Selectively and not on a moral basis most of the time.

I agree with Binners in that you need a more realistic perspective of what you need to do to actually get into power in this country and then what you can do based on what you had to do to get power. I don’t do it in such an over dramatic and Monthy Python image strewn manner though.

This is disengenous and defeatist.

You layout your plan and sell it.

Labour aren’t good at selling a plan it appears (when they have one) which we probably have a consensus on here would improve the vast majority of lives in the UK.

Also, the evidence appears to be times have moved on from the Blair era so just aping them is dooming Labour to failure anyway.

Labour are a bad cover version currently.

I don’t think he’s homophobic, I doubt anyone serious thinks he’s homophobic. But the left think it’s fine to throw that insult at him. I really wonder why labour and the left self immolate at every opportunity.

I’m glad at least one person got it:

I don’t think Corbyn’s detractors seriously believe him to be anti-Semitic, but that didn’t stop the usual suspects on here.

But as the saying goes; mud sticks. Corbyn’s enemies knew that by throwing enough mud, some of it would hopefully stick. I’ve had to explain to Israeli friends that Corbyn isn’t actually the rabid anti-semite that he’s portrayed in the right wing media as, far from it. But my point was that if Starmer makes such glaring mistakes, he can expect them to come back and bite him at some stage, if he incurs the wrath of Murdoch etc. Boris can be an actual racist, homophobe misogynist ****, but that’s fine. It’s how Blair can be an actual war criminal, but Murdoch etc like him, so that’s ok. See the apologists for Blair on here, for a perfect example of how easily people’s minds are shaped.

Some joker then asked me why I believe that which I don’t think is even worth an answer.

I’ll forgive your rudeness, but the truth is, you can’t really answer the question I put to you, is the bottom line. It’s now quite apparent that the penny is starting to drop for the Starmerists; they are slowly coming to the realisation they’ve backed the wrong horse. It’s clear Starmer isn’t going to offer any kind of serious reform of our society, all the macho posturing when he was ‘cleansing’ the party of dissidents, resulted in little more than expelling Jewish members. Oops. And now, he’s reduced to flag-shagging and bigging up British bombs, in a desperate attempt to appeal to the populism that Boris etc have sewn up. I fully expect him to get tough on the causes of crime, immigrants and benefit scroungers, next.

But I do recognise that most on here really do want to see some change, and society leaning back towards something half decent. And that all this infighting is simply an open goal for the tories. So, there has to be some kind of unity, cohesion, solidarity between people, if we’re to get out of this mess at all. Trouble is, where do we even start?

You really do have a chip on your shoulder about those with an education.

Do I? Oh. So by implication, I’m uneducated, so view the towering intellects of those like yourself with envy? I wasn’t aware we had to list our qualifications before commenting. Thats me told.

But your counterfactual perspective is interesting: we had to invade Iraq because Bush was going to anyway.

That’s not really what I said. I said that in the grand scheme of things the UK supporting the Bush administration or not would have made zero difference to the outcome. The US was absolutely 100% committed to invading Iraq with or without the UK or anybody else. We were a handy fig leaf of little consequence.

I’m not defending the invasion of Iraq. It was an absolute catastrophe on every level, but this quaint notion that the UK not going in would have made a shred of difference is ridiculous. In fact its as delusional about Britains place in the world as even the most hardcore Brexiteer

I’m not defending the invasion of Iraq.

Ah, here comes the back-pedalling…

Do I? Oh. .

Yes, you do.

That’s not really what I said. I said that in the grand scheme of things the UK supporting the Bush administration or not would have made zero difference to the outcome.

Domestically, I believe it made quite a bit of difference. It weakened Blair considerably (just look at how many seats and votes he lost in 2005) as supporters deserted Labour for the Lib Dems, and his personal popularity tanked. I sometimes wonder what would’ve happened in the 2010 GE…

Yes, you do.

I don’t at all, but its telling that your air of superiority now extends from the moral to cover the intellectual too.

So, to summarise: those who don’t share your views are now not only greedy, selfish Tories, but they’re also thick?

I don’t at all, but its telling that your air of superiority now extends from the moral to cover the intellectual too.

So, to summarise: those who don’t share your views are now not only greedy, selfish Tories, but they’re also thick?

Your faux indignation isn’t very convincing.

If you don’t understand class and exploitation in the process of production or just defend the status quo, it must make it a hard sell: we won’t scare the horses, we’re low-tax capitalists (with financial backing from major industrialists who also back the tories), we’re not promising cos we can’t just print money like the tories, we have a milf-friendly candidate, we don’t like protesters, we support landlords like Blair, the future will be different from the past, we’re chucking out the socialists and commies, the police and army do a cracking job, more money for wmd and screw the nurses.
Vote for sunshine and zephyrs in Hartlepool and we won’t let you down!
Corbyn will be resurrected to explain the result.

This is disengenous and defeatist.

Rather than untrusted and defeated.

So, there has to be some kind of unity, cohesion, solidarity between people, if we’re to get out of this mess at all. Trouble is, where do we even start?

Stop calling people who don’t currently vote labour uncaring, racist xenophobics, thick, Tories, etc

Might be a small but important step

Next step is to drop the suit with no tie look, it’s not relatable, especially on a windswept doorstep in Hartlepool

Stop being beholden to special interest groups, the visit to the church could have been handled differently, it’s doing important work in increasing vaccinations in a hesitant community, but you don’t agree on their views on LBGTQi etc, you praised them for the vaccine work and discussed the difference in views and labours plans to ban conversion therapy. (Dawn Butler MP was on the visit as well) etc etc

Getting votes in the centre is a sales job, it’s about brand, it’s about trust, it’s about confidence you aren’t going to stuff it all up, it’s about making people feel better about putting an X in your box than any other. If you don’t have the centre you aren’t in power, and if anything the centre is bigger than ever due to the reduction in areas where any random with the right colour rosette gets in

So, to summarise: those who don’t share your views are now not only greedy, selfish Tories, but they’re also thick?

You missed out racist xenophobes as well

What about imaginary anti-semites?

It’s amazing that those on the left consistently fail to see how they are viewed by the majority of voters.

They like to blame Murdoch, the ‘MSM’ (I ****ing hate that expression) for it, but the fact of the matter is that people see their lofty, judgemental assumptions of both moral and intellectual superiority, and casual dismissal of alternative viewpoints (ie: patriotism) as absolutely repellent and really resent it. They certainly won’t vote for it.

When I see Starmer acknowledging and addressing these perceptions, rather than sarcastiacly throw an accusation of ‘flag-shagging’ etc, I see someone who’s trying to show that the labour party isn’t sneering haughtily at them, which was definitely the impression given by a lot of those in the previous regime.

Whether they like it or not, the attitude of a lot of people on the left (and this thread amply illustrates it) absolutely plays into Boris and co’s hands in being able to portray the labour party as ‘the liberal elite’ who are sneering at them from their ivory, morally superior, metropolitan towers

Survey of Labour party members:

"Compared to Jeremy Corbyn, do you think Keir Starmer is doing better, worse, or about the same as leader of the Labour Party?"

Better: 61%
Worse: 29%

via @YouGov, 17 – 24 Mar

— Britain Elects (@BritainElects) April 8, 2021

. It’s clear Starmer isn’t going to offer any kind of serious reform of our society

I made the point before, I’ll say the same thing again. Starmer is a mainstream politician with a mainstream politician’s views. If you were expecting radical reform from a middle aged ex-lawyer, then you’re either woefully naïve or haven’t been  paying attention to what Labour are trying to do, or just looking at the wrong party. Labour put Starmer in charge as the feedback that they got from the last election from hundreds of thousands of people that might have/should have/would have voted for Labour was: “There is no way on earth I’m voting to put some-one like Corbyn in No 10”

Labour held a review of the 2019 election that basically said; We need to make up 123 seats in the next election cycle (to get a majority of one), an increase of 60 % which no party has ever done, and in a world that has tactical and swing voting as major features that play against us, so lets instead plan for the long game…Starmer is only a small part of that plan.

While that message might be a disappointing one for folk who want to see radical change, it’s a more sensible one for the mainstream opposition party that has to attract votes from a broad swath of the country in order to get elected.

I’m not defending the invasion of Iraq.

Binners you should have a hard think about the way you talk about Iraq, because the way it comes across is ‘it’s ok, it’s only dead foreigners, let bygones be bygones’. Well no, you can’t dismiss a million dead people, and 20 years of war, chaos and suffering so easily. That’s something that Blair and the majority of labour MPs did against the express wishes of their party and the voting public, and it lies at the heart of all labour’s problems today because they still haven’t taken responsibility for it.

<span style=”font-size: 0.8rem;”>if we’re to get out of this mess at all. Trouble is, where do we even start?</span>

We start with the inevitable crushing defeat for the outdated principle free centrist fantasy at the next election. Then people might realise it’s finally dead and we can crack on with some modern solutions which actually try to solve some of the problems instead of papering over the cracks. By then hopefully people will look to the trillions being spent in the US and ask why that’s not happening here?

By then hopefully people will look to the trillions being spent in the US and ask why that’s not happening here?

Because we elect another Conservative government? And another, and another. But still, if that proves that you right about “centrism”, who cares, huh?

If you were expecting radical reform from a middle aged ex-lawyer, then you’re either woefully naïve or haven’t been  paying attention to what Labour are trying to do

Or you were just believing the promises he made in his leadership campaign. I’ll admit to being naive though, and won’t be fooled again. Most people on the left would forgive a bit of caution and even some flag waving. They won’t forgive being lied to though. Starmer promised unity and an end to factional infighting, then went to war against the people who voted him in. Strange that he’s not that popular.

Starmer promised unity and an end to factional infighting

He can’t do that alone. It’s also now looking like a naive aspiration.

There is absolutely no proof of that.

Apart from the fact that when the Chilcot Inquiry was finally published, Cameron in parliament refused to issue an apology for the war, refused to say whether he thought the war was a mistake, and refused calls to apologise for the Conservative party’s role in lending it’s support for the run-up to the war. So I think we can assume that the Conservative party were briefed about the intelligence, and supported it. I’d say the odds suggest that had we had a Conservative govt at the time, we still would’ve ended up where we are today.