Obsolete

Wednesday, July 06, 2016

Chilcot.

The publication of the Chilcot report hasn't felt the same as those other reports into past misdeeds of the British state. How could it? Many of the faces in parliament may be different, but Iraq is a decision still raw and on-going, with much of the guilt still lying in the Commons. Unlike Bloody Sunday and Hillsborough, this was a decision that was parliament's to make. It flunked it. One of the saddest aspects of today is neither Robin Cook or Charles Kennedy are here to experience it, those two most understated opponents of the war, both of whom had much to lose but stuck to their principles regardless.

Perhaps I'm the only one who feels this way; deeply sad, lacking the motivation to point fingers for the umpteenth time. Chilcot's conclusions are far more damning than I and it seems the vast majority expected, all but saying Blair launched a war of aggression, that it was not a war of last resort, and that while no one specifically lied, exaggeration and completely ignoring the other side of the argument was at the very heart of a war of choice. It's just that it seems anti-climactic, when those other reports were anything but. Iraq has been so argued about, so studied, so drilled down into, with positions long since set that it has been all too apparent Chilcot was going to settle little.

This was reflected in David Cameron's response. The only reason we have had repeated inquiries into Iraq is because British troops died, and the war has been such an obvious disaster. There has been no equivalent inquiry into Afghanistan, despite our role in that similarly benighted country being only slightly less disastrous. Afghanistan has no natural resources and Afghanis matter less than Iraqis. Similarly, there has been no inquiry into the intervention in Libya other than a broad investigation by a parliamentary committee. No British servicemen died, see. There have been endless investigations in America into what happened in Benghazi, mind, for equally apparent reasons.

When David Cameron was outlining his disagreements with Chilcot, he was in effect defending himself over Libya. Most of the criticisms directed at Blair and the preparations for war in Iraq equally apply to that bloody fiasco. Cameron took action when there was no clear threat, when all the options had very clearly not been exhausted, where exaggerations of what might happen if we didn't act piled up, and without the slightest plan for what to do afterwards. Indeed, that there was no plan seems to have been the plan. If anything, the way in which the UN Security Council's authorisation was abused, with NATO using it as cover for regime change was even more egregious than the way Bush and Blair had no intention of giving the UN weapons inspectors a chance to do their work. The damage to the concept of the responsibility to protect has been incalculable. So also we don't properly know how influential the deception over Libya was on Russia and Putin, with all that has followed since in Syria.

For it's apparent Chilcot's findings, crushing as they are for Blair, will change absolutely nothing. Of course there must always be the option of acting quickly in the event of an attack definitively linked to either a state or a state harbouring a terrorist group, but this has not been the case in any of the conflicts since Iraq. Equally, we should not shy away from intervening to prevent or stop a genocide, if it can be established forces can be deployed quickly enough, that our actions will stop it, that the threat is real and we have a plan for what comes afterwards.

The fact is politics doesn't work as Chilcot would like it to, as has been so amply demonstrated by the other events of the past couple of weeks. Labour can't even get a coup 9 months in the planning right, while the Tories by contrast have such a lust for power that friendships and bonds of years can be sacrificed in a matter of seconds for the slightest of advantages. Planning is an alien concept, unless there's something in it for them personally. When the architect of the "not doing stupid shit" doctrine has done plenty of such things, what hope of our less thoughtful representatives pledging to do the same? When we have a media that, again, has spent the past couple of weeks demonstrating its enduring belief in wielding power without responsibility, what hope of no repeat of the Murdoch press boosting of Blair?

Most pertinently, why would anything change when the consequences of setting an entire region on fire are so slight? If Blair has suffered mentally for his decision, he certainly hasn't in any other aspect. Our soon to be outgoing prime minister orchestrated a parliamentary standing ovation for him, while no bank or dictatorship is yet to decide a man partially responsible for setting off a conflagration that has led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands to be too toxic to pay millions. He remains influential to many politicians, especially on foreign policy, even if they won't admit to it, while his ideas are still instantly reported on and debated seriously. Would anyone in a similar position ever have been allowed to make so desperate a "defence" of his continued righteousness as he was today, a self-pitying diatribe (yes, I know) that hasn't changed in 13 years? When Blair was allowed to get away with once again describing the decision not to attack Syria in 2013 as a grievous mistake, the Syria conflict a war that could not possibly have turned out the way it has if it hadn't been for the Iraq invasion, what possible chance that a future prime minister will think twice about launching a war of aggression against another shithole country that poses no direct threat to us?

How desperately, pathetically sad and predictable. Much like this writer.

Labels: Chilcot inquiry, David Cameron, Iraq, Iraq disaster, liberal interventionism, politics, Tony Blair

Share |

7/06/2016 09:30:00 pm | Permalink | | links to this post

Wednesday, June 08, 2016

Where are the Blairs of yesteryear?

A couple of weeks back, Sam Kriss wrote an absolutely glorious, unrelentingly scabrous and marvellously offensive takedown of Nick Cohen. Cohen, Kriss writes, is "the one who looks like a kind of malignant egg, with his pervert’s dent of a top lip". This didn't go unnoticed by David Aaronovitch, with the great man tweeting Kriss on how he only wrote such things as he knew Cohen wouldn't sue him. Oh, and that he should fuck off. Cohen himself was left with little to do other than the equivalent of shouting leave him Dave, he ain't worth it, adding only "the poor fucker can't write".

I mention Aaronovitch and Cohen only to compare them with their fallen leader. Not that either would ever confess to being a Blair booster, despite that being the role both have effectively played for years, the outsider commentators pushing for that muscular liberalism Blair only really embraced and talked of once out of office, even if it was the very essence of the Blair doctrine. While there are still Blair devotees in Labour, the Tories and among the leader writers of various newspapers, actual commentators with a weekly column pushing the interventionist line are getting rarer.

This is hardly surprising when none of the liberal interventionists have ever had the eloquence, the force of argument, or most importantly, the belief that Blair had and still does. Tony you truly have to accept believes what he says when it comes to bombing it better; he still believes the Iraq war was the right thing to do. He still thinks despite everything that we should have fully intervened on the side of the rebels in Syria, even if that means allying with jihadists funded by the Saudis, or al-Qaida itself. He still poses the question of how things would have turned out if we hadn't decide to get rid of Saddam, as though you could ever say surely nowhere near as badly as they have done.

In short, it's always been difficult not to regard Blair with a grudging respect. Say what you like about him, he has a world-view, and he's stuck to it in spite of everything. Of his followers, Cohen has been the only one never to accept that Iraq was a disastrous mistake. It hasn't stopped them from pushing to repeat the mistake elsewhere, but they didn't have the balls or that word again, the belief, to keep on defending something that to so many of us quickly became indefensible.

Only Blair finally seems to have cracked. Perhaps the imminence of the publication of the Chilcot report and the strain of what it might say about him has finally pushed him over the edge. To many of us nothing Chilcot could possibly conclude will make any difference at this point. He's not going to say Blair lied. About the best we can hope is for the blame to be spread equally, for it most certainly wasn't Tone that dragged us kicking and screaming into a war of aggression. A large number of those that supported it did so with almost a spring in their step.

A Blair thinking straight wouldn't launch an ad hominem, straw man attack on Jeremy Corbyn as he has today. Blair raging against Corbyn for not lifting a finger against an actual war criminal in Bashar Assad might make more sense if it wasn't now 3 years since the Commons rejected air strikes that were meant as some sort of punishment for using chemical weapons, not aimed at actually deposing him. If Blair wants to go after anyone over that, it should be Ed Miliband, the coalition for making such a fuck-up of the case, or as he probably acknowledges deep down, himself for forever giving ill-thought through and badly planned military adventures a bad name.

No, see, our Tone got rid of a bona fide war criminal when he and Bush overthrew Saddam. Of course, Saddam principally committed his war crimes while we were supplying him with weapons and the likes of Corbyn were condemning the gassing of the Kurds as the government of the time said not a dicky bird, but that's by the by. What has Corbyn ever achieved with his protesting? Is his brand of opposition ever likely to lead to power? Does he even want power?

The sad thing is, Blair has a point. Being opposed on principle to war until all other alternatives have been exhausted, or keeping our nose out of civil wars in the Middle East doesn't tend to win you elections. We only need to look across the pond to where Hillary Clinton has just triumphed in the Democratic race, despite how Hillary has never seen a conflict she didn't want to join in with or failed to support when suggested by the Republicans. Hillary owns Libya even more than Obama does, and if anything has even greater interventionist credentials than our Tone, among her closest advisers and friends Samantha Power, who really has wrote the book, Susan Rice and Anne-Marie Slaughter. Whichever of Trump or Hillary ends up as president, you can guarantee there's going to be a whole load more wars, with our good selves following meekly behind.

Unless Corbyn wins. Which he won't.

Labels: Iraq, Jeremy Corbyn, liberal interventionism, politics, Sam Kriss, Syria, Tony Blair

Share |

6/08/2016 09:48:00 pm | Permalink | | links to this post

Thursday, October 29, 2015

Want to come over and Netflix and Chilcot?

(I am once again sorry for the title.)

The temptation to simply make bad jokes about the Chilcot inquiry at this point is all but overwhelming. Iraq war inquiry still not to be over by Christmas. No shock and awe as Chilcot says report to be launched within 45 years. De'Chilcotisation process still not achieved, despite intervention of Daily Mail.

And indeed, for all the protestations of Chilcot and his relatively few friends in the media, it is absurd that a report on a war that lasted 7 years should take an equal amount of time to gestate before finally emerging. Delayed as it has been by the death of panel member Sir Martin Gilbert and incessant, interminable hold-ups over just what can and cannot be released of the conversations between Tony Blair and George Bush, the responsibility ultimately is on Chilcot himself. If during the early stages he realised it was to be an even more mammoth task then he assumed, as he must have done, then he should have requested extra resources.

Far from all the blame can be laid at Chilcot's door, however. Nor can it be pinned on Blair, or on the Maxwellisation process of contacting those due to be criticised for a response as a whole. Such has the focus been on whether or not Blair will finally be held to account (spoiler: he won't) that it seems to have been forgotten Chilcot's remit was across the board, as it had to be. Blair, both rightly and wrongly, has become defined by Iraq. It will be how he's principally remembered, and yet this is far too simplistic a view of how we came to find ourselves riding the coattails of an even by historical standards exceptionally right-wing Republican administration's plan to remake the Middle East. Blair was the driving force, certainly, but there are meant to be safeguards in place across government to prevent a prime minister from taking his country to war on such flimsy grounds. They failed, with much of Whitehall working in concert with the prime minister to ensure Britain took part in a war it had no need to.

It's this that somewhat explains why Chilcot's task has taken so much longer than it should. Gordon Brown delayed the inquiry itself until the last minute, no doubt partly because he hoped he'd be gone by the time it came to report. The Tories' fervour for an inquiry, driven by the hope that it would further damage Labour, has long since transformed into the realisation that it'll be under their watch a potentially damning report will be published. Cameron's public statements, that he wants the report published as soon as possible, mask what has in fact been an alliance with the Cabinet Office to delay it as much as possible. Whether or not Richard Norton Taylor's reports are entirely accurate on Whitehall providing documents to those set to be criticised which Chilcot himself did not receive, it's apparent there has been a refusal to cooperate, at the very least in a timely fashion, that Chilcot will hopefully address in the report itself.

As argued previously, the idea the report will provide the "closure" some want sadly doesn't reflect how previous such inquiries have gone. At best, Chilcot will be critical across the board, as that's precisely where responsibility does lie. The idea Blair got his way in the face of resistance is nonsense: the intelligence agencies, the civil service, the military, other government departments, other ministers, the opposition Conservative party, all either acquiesced at the slightest prompting or actively went along with war plan Iraq. Any criticisms that were made took place behind close doors (with the obvious exception of Clare Short), and either ignored or dismissed. Some of this was also down to how they believed the war would be over quickly; no one suspected there would be such resistance, from both Sunni and Shia militants, let alone that a terrorist group to rival al-Qaida itself would emerge from the rubble.

The same cannot be said now, which again helps to explain why there have been such delays. Should Chilcot's criticism go further than expected, it will only highlight how the same deficiencies, same refusal to plan for the worst, same touching belief in the power of bombing countries better persists. You only have to look at the response from the government to parliament's refusal to vote for air strikes on Assad to see how practically nothing has changed: it wasn't that the government had failed to make an even remotely convincing case, it was everyone else's, whether Ed Miliband's or that of a country supposedly coming over isolationist all of a sudden. Just as with Iraq, the attorney general assured everyone it was all above board legally, and an incredibly lacking intelligence briefing was also provided. It's no coincidence that by next July a decision one way or the other will likely have been made on joining the action in Syria against Islamic State, when without doubt the same old arguments and same old practices will have reared their heads once again.

After all, Blair if nothing else recognises that Islamic State owes its existence to his war. By contrast, the more out there interventionists still with us maintain that our involvement in Libya has no connection whatsoever to what has happened since, and to believe so is to fall into the ad hoc fallacy. Casuality apparently doesn't exist. Others argue that Libya would have descended into chaos if we hadn't intervened, which is probably true, but not an argument for having done so. Chilcot, whatever conclusions he reaches, will not change the debate one iota. How could he?

Labels: Chilcot inquiry, David Cameron, foreign policy, inquiries, Iraq, Iraq disaster, politics, Tony Blair

Share |

10/29/2015 07:40:00 pm | Permalink | | links to this post

Thursday, August 13, 2015

The road to Jeremy.

"There is something fascinating about watching a party wrestle with its soul." So goes Tony Blair's explanation as to why Jeremy Corbyn's campaign has "sparked interest". What Blair really thinks is far clearer: this isn't just people rubbernecking, who don't want to look at an accident but can't find the willpower not to, but the actions of those whose first instinct is to reach for their smartphone and "join in". To Blair and the still true believing Blairites, Corbyn doesn't so much as offer creative destruction, but just destruction: everything they achieved is under threat. To them, the reason Labour lost the last two elections is because Gordon and Ed abandoned their "values", didn't remain that "radical centre". Everything else that's happened since Blair stepped down is irrelevant.

As has already been pointed out approximately 392 million times, the lack of self-awareness is quite extraordinary. It doesn't seem to occur to Blair that perhaps, just perhaps, the decisions he took while leader might have something to do with Labour's predicament now. For argument's sake, let's dispense with the Iraq war, the way you can only push a party around for so long by arguing the only way to win is through triangulation, with the constant taking on of your own backbenchers, and accept the Blair argument that while not perfect, he left the party in a good shape.

The fact is he didn't. The TB-GBs, the infighting, the broken promises, they left a party that while never united in its history, and has as the left is wont to do, often accused its leaders of selling out, substantially weakened. Moreover, Blair and Brown had dominated the party for so long that once the pair themselves were out of the way, it left the crop of leadership candidates we saw in 2010 to pick up the pieces. The Blairites had always thought themselves far more talented than they were in actuality, as could not be more evidenced by Hazel Blears and John Reid to name but the two most egregious examples. Not that Brown's acolytes were much better on the whole, but give me Ed Balls over almost any of the now vastly diminished gang of Blair groupies any day. Brown's election or rather ascension was swiftly followed by the spitting out of the dummy by such leading lights as James Purnell, now of course of the BBC. Fact was that Labour was doomed by the crash, anyway; how different things might have been had Brown had the courage to call that early election, and ignore the polls suggesting he would only scrape back in.

This process was then repeated following Ed Miliband's election. It was David's birthright! Ed stabbed him in the back! Ed's a hopeless loser! And who knows, maybe, just maybe a David Miliband-led party would have performed slightly better. Rather than wait for a second opportunity though, or hell, even stop sulking and do his darnedest to help his brother out, Dave fucked off to New York, and with him went the Blairites' last realistic hope. Leaving who? Chuka Umunna, who couldn't so much as handle the slightest amount of press intrusion that Ed dealt with and fought back against from the start? Liz Kendall, who bless her is trying but hasn't worked out you can't just deliver insults and lectures and expect a depressed yet still hopeful party will snap back into line? Rachel Reeves, who makes Arthur "Two Sheds" Jackson look interesting, and in any case has now hitched her wagon to the Burnham train? Speaking of whom, isn't it indicative that excluding Corbyn, the two other candidates either ran previously and came second from last, or are the partner of someone also rejected? Isn't that perhaps an insight into just why someone as unelectable, as backwards, as old school as Corbyn has reached the parts they haven't?

No, it's not their fault. At the very heart of the modern Labour party is a contradiction: it claims to be the people's party, to represent those from all walks of life, and yet when those very same people decide they would like to vote for the next leader, the reaction is one of horror and paranoia. It surely ought to occur that only a tiny number of the 121,000 who have registered as supporters can be Trots or Tories, and that for a party that lost so badly to have signed up that number in such a short space of time, not to include those who've done so through their union, is something really quite special. To end up with an electorate of over 600,000 gives the lie to the idea that mass party membership isn't possible in the 21st century. It ought to be embraced, celebrated. The number will without doubt fall back significantly, but it still means that a huge number of people in this country are looking to the Labour party, not to any other organisation, grouplet or flash in the pan activist group to lead the opposition to the Conservatives.

And yet to Blair and indeed the other three candidates this feat apparently equals annihilation. It would of course be wrong to extrapolate from the mass sign up that the country at large is crying out for an alternative; if it were, more would have voted for Ed. It hardly though suggests Labour is anywhere near finished, unless that is Labour itself it is out of pure spite. The situation reminds of fans of a band that stop liking their previously favourite group once it hits the mainstream, regardless of whether or not they adapted themselves to do so. When Labour had the 400,000 or so members it did at the height of Blairism, that was great, fantastic. When they sign up to vote Corbyn, although that again is to surmise, the sky is about to fall.

As is no doubt clear by my fluttering of eyelashes in the direction of Kendall, I'm not Corbyn's biggest fan. There's nothing spectacularly wrong with any of his policies, but then neither is there anything spectacularly right with them, or rather there's no reason why they should be priorities. I quite like the idea of renationalising the railways by taking them back into state control as the current franchises expire, but when like it or not money is so tight should it be a leading pledge? The same goes for abolishing tuition fees, which again is a wonderful, progressive policy, just one that perplexes me by how it continues to be proposed when we know just how screwed any party will be that fails to live up to the promise. Compare them though with what's on offer from the other three, with only Kendall offering substantially anything different, and nearly always for the worse, and it's little wonder why a left-wing party has decided that if it's going to lose, it might as well lose by being genuinely left-wing. Why carry on waltzing into George Osborne's bear traps if it won't alter the end result?

This is to fall into the belief that Corbyn is completely unelectable, admittedly. A lot can happen in 5 years, and Blair's line in his article that the public would turn on the party for its self-indulgence is nonsense. A Corbyn led Labour party would be many things, but not providing active opposition is hardly something it could be accused of. The obsession with being a party of government at all times, when Labour cannot be a party of government unless the Tories lose their slight majority for 5 years is completely bizarre. There is not the slightest recognition that Labour's victory in 2005 with 35% of the vote was no more sustainable than Tories' win with 36% this time will be. Ed Miliband won more votes in England than Blair did in 2005, it should be pointed out.

The last roll of the dice it seems is to Yvette Cooper. Liz Kendall is too far behind, Andy Burnham can't be trusted as far as he can be thrown, so it falls to the candidate that has said the least, has the least personality and hoped to swing it on the basis of 2nd choice votes from Corbyn supporters to carry the banner of the sensible. Considering just how boring David Cameron is, in some ways Cooper would certainly be a worthy competitor: if that's what the British public likes most about their leaders at this point in history, then carry on. According to the Graun though the next leader must take on "the desiccated condition of the Labour establishment", the same Labour establishment that Cooper has finally embraced with her attack on Corbyn. I can't help but think that either Burnham or Kendall would be more capable of that task, of "harnessing young people's passion", and am frankly bemused by the sudden upswing in support for someone who has always seemed up to now an also-ran, achieving high office without ever having done anything to distinguish themselves. Which might just have something to do with it.

In any case, you suspect it's all been left too late. Rather than try and engage Corbyn supporters as soon as it became clear he was making headway, the approach has been to either insult him or them, or hope that by sort of agreeing with him while also sort of not that everyone would see how radical and sensible they were at the same time. As ought to have been lesson from the Lib Dem collapse, from the nigh on 4 million votes for UKIP, it doesn't work like that anymore. Nor are they going to take of notice of those who claim that political parochialism is a result of the crash, rather than the foreign policy disasters supported by the same people who keep on saying no you can't, and who then go on to quote the Hamas charter as to why Jeremy Corbyn while not personally an anti-semite, does stand in close proximity to them. A Corbyn leadership might not last long, it probably won't trouble the Tories in the slightest, but Labour had better started getting used to the idea sharpish. Hell, it could even look at precisely how it got here, take some responsibility, and make the best of it.

Yeah, right.

Labels: Blairites, election 2015, Jeremy Corbyn, Labour leadership contest 2015, Liz Kendall, politics, Tony Blair

Share |

8/13/2015 10:41:00 pm | Permalink | | links to this post

Thursday, July 23, 2015

"It's not difficult, Manuel. This is not a proposition from Wittgenstein."

"It should not have been complicated to oppose the bill." No, it shouldn't. Absolutely nothing about Labour's meltdown this week has been complicated. Jeremy Corbyn, who said those words about the welfare act, is not complicated. Nor is his appeal. He's a left-winger daring to say left-wing things to a left-wing party.

Remarkably, this has been enough to expose Labour for what it has become. Mary Creagh on Newsnight last night said it was "nostalgic, narcissistic" that a few MPs donated their nominations to Corbyn to get him on the ballot in the interests of a wider debate. Chuka Umunna says some are acting like "petulant children" for even considering supporting Corbyn. John McTernan said the MPs who got Corbyn on the ballot are morons. Tony Blair says anyone whose heart leads them to support Corbyn should get a heart transplant.

A left of centre party that finds itself this discombobulated, this angry, this self-righteous about a socialist deigning to broaden its leadership contest is in danger of digging its own grave. It seems absolutely nothing has been learned from the party's all but demise in Scotland. There an upstart party that is on most measures to the right of Labour stole its clothes, struck a left-wing pose and swept the board. Rather than consider why the country came so close to voting for independence or understand that not distancing itself from the Tories had been an incredible error, the response was to do the equivalent of say no you can't, and vote in a right-winger as the new party leader.

You can't go on saying no you can't and keep expecting everyone to demur. Labour's membership has been told no you can't for over 20 years now. In 2007 it didn't even get a choice. In 2010 it wouldn't have made the slightest difference if the vote had swung David rather than Ed Miliband's way. The end result would have almost certainly been the same. Maybe there would still be a Tory-Lib Dem coalition or a Tory minority government rather than a small Tory majority, but Labour would not have won. In 2015, a membership once again told by the Very Serious People at the top of the party that they are idiots, morons, children for even thinking of taking the party back to the 80s by making a left-winger the leader are saying fuck you, yes we can.

The lack of self-awareness, the lack of self-doubt, the lack of the slightest consideration of whether they might be in the wrong rather than it being everyone else is staggering. I could understand it more if rather than just abusing Corbyn, repeating the back to the 80s non-argument and insulting all and sundry who think Labour should be better than this (hah), the rest of the leadership candidates were making a distinctive case for themselves. I could respect the ridicule if at the same time they were admitting the party needs to think long and hard about where it has gone wrong, to listen and learn from both the grassroots and voters in general, to realise that the only way to recover from this position is to have as wide-ranging a debate as possible. Instead, what's happened has proved John Harris exactly right: a week after the defeat he wrote that he doubted the Labour elite had "the wit or the humility" to accept it needed to do precisely that.

This is in fact to be unfair to Liz Kendall. She and Corbyn both have a position. She would make the best leader out of the four, and almost certainly feels compelled by the vacuum on offer from both Burnham and Cooper to play further to the right than she really is. She too though won't take Corbyn on directly, won't argue her case on her terms, and instead mouths the "disaster" mantra.

It really is as simple as this: if you can't convince the party's own membership that you have a better chance of winning than a socialist stuck in a time warp, as the Blairites are so insistent on portraying Corbyn as, how on earth do you expect to convince the wider electorate? If you're this scared of debate, this averse to so much as accepting a socialist should be on the ballot on 2015, you should be asking yourself not just what you're doing in the Labour party, but doing in politics at all. When Frank Field, Frank Field of all people, while still not accepting Corbyn has widened the debate by being on the ballot, says that he hopes one of the other candidates "has actually got both the physical courage and the intellectual clout to start that debate", you know the party is in trouble. Kendall, and I hope it is Kendall despite everything, still has 7 weeks in which to actually do something other than carp and indulge in ad hominem attacks. It might just be an idea to get started right away.

Labels: Jeremy Corbyn, Labour, Labour leadership contest 2015, Liz Kendall, media analysis, politics, Tony Blair

Share |

7/23/2015 08:04:00 pm | Permalink | | links to this post

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Much like pulling teeth.

For the last two days I have had raging, agonising toothache. You might have thought that by age 30 I would have reached the stage where my gnashers are all present and correct, and the only way from here is down in numbers rather than up, but no. One bastard wisdom tooth is still determined to burrow its way up through the gum, only it's coming through with a massive hole in the centre. Whether it's the pain from its continuing journey, as I've been suffering from pangs on and off for a few months now, or it's finally decided to get infected, as the previous one also did, I don't know. What I do know is that it's coming through in such a position on the lower left side of my mouth that it has to be removed at the hospital, rather than my dentist being able to do so. This will most likely mean a wait of around 6 months.

You can hopefully appreciate then just how little my mood has been improved by Labour's progress through the 5 stages of political ineptitude. Different individuals within the party are at different stage, with some still being stuck in the denial phase, while others are as far along as depression. John McTernan is most definitely in anger, while relatively few have so much as considered bargaining. Acceptance, well, no one's got as far as that yet.

This would all be very much easier to take if the analysis of political journalists wasn't also so skewed, or just dead wrong. Rafael Behr in a generally not that bad piece in the Graun turns once again to that old canard about the left preferring purity to governance, regarding victory as being only one step away from betrayal. Bollocks. Yes, there are a tiny number on the left that would rather be holier than thou than in a position to effect change, but they are most certainly not within Labour itself, nor are they for the most part out and out Labour supporters. Sympathisers, definitely, but just as likely to vote for another party when it comes to it. It's also complete nonsense to say that Ed Miliband's legacy will be to have rehabilitated this tendency after Blair turned Labour into a party that won elections. The idea that Labour under Miliband was not serious about winning, that it didn't try its damnedest to win is laughable. The reason the shock was so great, remains so great is that everyone, the media, the other parties, also believed the polls to be accurate. As we've seen before, once the facts change most people then claim they were always against something now seen to be a disaster, or in this instance never believed Labour could win.

Behr's other mistake is to again repeat the argument that Labour regard those who voted Tory as not being good people, or not having good motives. This is absurd. As he himself sets out in his intro, the main reason the Tories won is they had a strong message well communicated by someone regarded as a plausible leader. They also however relied heavily on the scare tactic of a Labour-SNP coalition/minority government, which while not necessarily the game changer many think, definitely had an impact. The real problem, as evidenced by this week's scarcely believable stupidity over the welfare bill, is that the "realists" are convinced the Tory win is proof voters are overwhelmingly supportive of Osborne's "new settlement", or at least large parts of it. The evidence for this is sketchy at best. In any case, as pointed out by Dean Burnett, to think a vote in parliament now is going to affect how those good people vote in 2020 is ludicrous. It has though driven traditional Labour supporters who are paying attention into paroxysms of despair, as well as delighting the other opposition parties who can't quite believe their luck.

We must then come to the latest sighting of our Tone. No one knows quite where he descends from, or quite where it is he goes once he's put in an appearance, but whenever there's a situation to be made even more disagreeable, up he turns. You might remember that just before the election campaign proper got going he told the Economist he believed that in a battle between a traditional left-wing party and a traditional right-wing party there could only be the traditional result. This was an incredibly incisive piece of analysis, just slightly undermined by how describing Ed Miliband's Labour party as traditionally left-wing is to make clear you are an utter nincompoop.

Which has always been the problem with Blair. He's often right, but when he's wrong, he's wrong to the power of eleventy stupid. Labour lost in 2010 not because it had been exhausted by power, as all parties are eventually, but because Gordon Brown in Tone's eyes had stepped back from the modernising agenda. Ed Miliband rowed even further back, although Tone kindly says he came to have "great admiration" for Miliband's refusal to back down. Miliband thought the centre ground had shifted to the left, whereas Tone doesn't believe "it shifts in that way".

Blair is in many ways just like the rest of us. We don't like to admit when we're wrong, so we often double down instead. Only when convinced of our righteousness do we in fact put up a fight. Blair therefore doesn't think the centre ground can ever move to the left, when the reality is it can only ever be shifted left or right through argument, winning debates and the majority accepting the case made. Blair is explicit that he thinks nationalism is retrograde, the politics of the caveman, just as he also thinks to be against immigration is foolish, stupid. Both stances should therefore be fought for regardless of whether or not doing so is a winner strategy. The many things Miliband fought for by contrast were a rejection of the modernising zeal he thought he had inculcated in the party, and therefore bad regardless of whether they won votes. Indeed, even if he did think "an old fashioned leftist platform" was the route to victory, Tone wouldn't stand on it.

Anyone detecting something of a similarity between the supposed attitudes of the lefties who prefer purity to power and the Blairites at the opposite end of the scale are of course barking up the wrong tree. Tone doesn't really mean it; if the politics of Jeremy Corbyn were the route back to power, he'd be all over them. Blair was always, has always been less of a Blairite than the Blairites themselves, as shown by his five pieces of advice for the party. These are in actual fact rather good, if somewhat obvious. Embrace technological change he says; do not accept the argument that Labour caused the crash, even if it could have done things better; learn lessons from Labour councils; develop a dialogue with business, especially on productivity and skills; and lastly, reform how the party itself operates, taking cues from organisations abroad.

Regardless of its merits, we've long passed the point at which an intervention from Blair is a welcome one. For all the sniping at Corbyn, Blair like the others in the party doesn't seem to realise the reason he's doing is well is not because he's the answer. Barely anyone truly thinks he is. He's doing well because the rest are so shockingly awful and because their arguments, when they bother to make them, are neither one thing nor the other. Even Blair recognises that Corbyn is "Labour through and through". Liz Kendall isn't doing badly because she really is a crypto-Tory, it's because she and the others have failed to convince so far that their answers are better, or any more likely to lead to victory. When given the choice between someone who is Labour, and three others who don't have the courage of their convictions, what choice is there?

Labels: Jeremy Corbyn, Labour, Labour leadership contest 2015, media analysis, politics, Tony Blair

Share |

7/22/2015 07:42:00 pm | Permalink | | links to this post

Monday, June 08, 2015

Iraq and othering.

In his otherwise fine tribute to Charles Kennedy (only Steve Bell's beautifully elegiac and moving watercolour was finer), Alastair Campbell couldn't help but get a dig in at those whom, when it comes to him and Our Tone, can't see beyond Iraq:

Charles knew that it was possible to disagree with people without constantly feeling the need to condemn them as lacking in integrity or values; though he was not averse to making a few cracks about historic events down the road in Glencoe.

And it's true, it's perfectly possible to disagree with someone's politics without disliking them as a person; there are plenty of marriages and partnerships that are testament to that. Equally though, it's fair to say most of us are happiest and most comfortable among those who think the same way, or we at least believe do so. Where the line becomes more blurred is when we get into the territory of othering; when we ascribe motives to our opponents that we might believe they have when they do not. It's far more difficult to remain on friendly terms with someone who thinks the worst and isn't backward in coming forward with such accusations. Both left and right do this, regardless of how the right often complains the left is more susceptible to othering; while not the best example, Lionel Shriver wrote in the Graun after the election that the reason there are "shy Tories" is because of how successful the left apparently is at portraying those on the centre-right as being heartless monsters.

You do though have to wonder if Campbell is yet again protesting too much. Very few now will claim, can claim, that Blair's motives in going to war in Iraq were cynical. He fervently believed, and indeed still does believe that getting rid of Saddam was the right thing to do. The way the case for war was presented was cynical, no doubt about it, although this again is not to say that Blair did not truly believe that Iraq had a WMD programme, was in breach of UN resolutions and so war could be justified on those grounds. How he came to believe that is again open to question, but that he genuinely believed it was the case is not in doubt. Blair's crisis of confidence in mid-2004, when he came extremely close to resigning such was the pressure over the failure to find the missing WMD coupled with the death of Dr David Kelly is testament to that.

Belief is key to understanding Blair. The former prime minister's every move is a mess of contradictions, just as his ideology, or rather lack of it always was: Blair believes, therefore he is. He has no objection to supporting dictators or autocrats (and taking their money) every bit as oppressive as Saddam was, at least in his later years when under sanctions, so long as they are supportive of the West. He is deeply opposed to Islamism, and would rather states like Egypt remain under the yoke of one man than become exceptionally messy democracies which elect the likes of the Muslim Brotherhood. Yet he's never voiced any concerns about the AKP in Turkey, perhaps because, err, until the weekend it looked as though Erdogan was becoming the very kind of ruler he's fond of. Blair isn't oblivious to his idiosyncrasies, or to just how much of a disaster his support for the Iraq war has been; he can and has seen it. It just hasn't altered his belief that he was, is right regardless.

With Campbell there is no such belief. You can't be an alcoholic, a depressive, as Campbell is, and believe so wholly in yourself, in everything you do, and project it so consistently. Campbell famously said "we don't do God", whereas with Blair it's difficult to know which God he believes in the most, himself or Jehovah. Unlike Blair, Campbell has also never given so much as the slightest inkling that he believed the war in Iraq was the right thing to do. Where belief is key to understanding Blair, key to understanding Campbell is loyalty. On the day Robert Maxwell fell off his boat, taking the Mirror pension fund with him, Campbell was the one punching Michael White for making a Cap'n Bob-bob-bob joke. Likewise, Campbell was so loyal to Blair that he became a liability. Who knows what the Chilcot inquiry will eventually conclude about dodgy dossiers and all the rest of it, but Campbell served his master regardless of whether he thought he was right or not. Whether Campbell secretly advised Blair that the war thing was all a bit loopy-loo we don't know. Perhaps he did. Perhaps he didn't. Regardless, he did what he was employed to.

The vast majority of us do the same, albeit usually on far less serious matters. We might think our bosses are idiots, but it's rare we say that to their faces, at least if we want to remain employed. We might advise them their strategy or way of thinking is wrong, but we carry on regardless if they disagree. Neither Blair or Campbell could have foreseen what a disaster Iraq would turn out to be; they were certainly warned civil war was a possibility, as they were that it would foment terrorism and potentially bring it to these shores. No one came close to predicting it would lead to the rise of a terrorist group that would look to usurp al-Qaida, that would straddle both Iraq and Syria and be so adept at propagandising that British schoolgirls would be attracted to its cause. They could though have foreseen the instability that would erupt from the abandonment of any plan for the aftermath, that a country which had already been bombed by the US and the UK for 12 years prior to the invasion wouldn't with open arms welcome their liberators, that there is no telling what forces you will stir up by removing completely the existing governing structure and starting again, a pattern we've seen repeated in Libya.

When Jon Snow then says the Tariq Aziz he knew was a "nice guy", he's no doubt telling the truth. Plenty of dictatorships have a softer face, that suggests reform could be possible, and like Aziz did, provide some representation for a minority group. Aziz might not have been responsible principally for any of the oppression that either the Kurds or the Shia in Iraq suffered either; Jalal Talabani, the Kurdish Iraqi president, refused to sign the warrant for his execution. As the obituaries have made clear however, he was involved in the decisions to go to war with Iran and then invade Kuwait. He most certainly had blood on his hands. So too, without question, does Tony Blair. Does the fact Blair was elected whereas Aziz never was make a difference? Do Aziz's initial politics, his support for Arab nationalism, help us understand how he came to be where he was and how he justified it to himself? Does the fact he was the softer face of one of the most destructive dictatorships in the region in fact make him a worse person?

Just as it is possible to disagree with someone without questioning or condemning their integrity or values, it is possible to think worse of someone precisely because their integrity or values are or seem to be pure. Blair continues to be a malign influence on the world stage because his black and white view of the world is so dangerous, because he has learned nothing from the war he still believes was the right thing to do. Campbell is a fascinating figure and invites such hostility precisely because of his success and his contrasting ability to claim white is in fact black, so long as it's in the interests of who he's working for. Worse, I might posit, are those commentators who take advantage of the slightest opportunity to push their lost cause, who in the face of all the evidence even now argue for more of the same. Campbell, like Aziz, might be a nice guy when you get to know him, as Charles Kennedy, a more than decent judge of character felt. The rest of us can only judge based on the face those like Campbell present to the world.

Labels: Alastair Campbell, Charles Kennedy, foreign policy, Iraq, Jon Snow, politics, Tony Blair

Share |

6/08/2015 10:48:00 pm | Permalink | | links to this post

Tuesday, April 07, 2015

An election campaign broadside on behalf of all lazy Brits.

If you're me (and if you are, why is it you haven't killed yourself yet?), then on an almost weekly basis events will occur that make you declare you don't want to live on this planet anymore. Kardashian hair colour changes treated like the second coming of Christ, Wayne Rooney goals celebrated in the same way as parents do a child taking its first solid dump, newspapers still focusing on the way politicians eat, as we just can't forget how Ed Miliband failed to take sustenance from a bacon sandwich in the approved fashion, all result in the survival instinct dithering just that little bit more.

And then something like yesterday's Sun front page comes along. There are times when every single piece of information on a front page can be wrong, and yet it can still be completely unobjectionable, or you just roll your eyes and look away. There are times when every single piece of information on a front page can be wrong, and it's so objectionable that more than 25 years later those affected by it complain if the editor responsible is given any sort of platform. Then there are times when a front page has apparently been put together by someone who has been home-schooled by parents who have only ever communicated with their child through the nexus that is Google Translate. The process of translating English to Albanian and then back again results in the child learning something vaguely resembling English, so they pick up the rudiments, but not much more. To everyone else their work is completely indecipherable, and yet despite all the obstacles in their way they managed to get a job working for the country's leading tabloid newspaper.

At some point in the future, most likely in thousands of millennia, when Earth is discovered by an incredibly advanced race of creatures that have managed to overcome all the barriers in the way of intergalactic space travel, only then is it likely will there exist life on this planet that can explain just what was going through the minds of the Sun journalists behind yesterday's the REEM TICKET splash. Every single thing about it is wrong. The paper that objected so strongly to Emily Thornberry "sneering" at white van man declares that two reality TV stars speak for "hard-working Brits". The headline, that no one, not even the people who claim to know what "reem" means, will be able to say makes sense. The introduction to the article, that declares Joey and Amy to be TOWIE stars, except both left the show a while ago. The photographs, that show two individuals not so much wearing make-up as the make-up wearing them. And, of course, their "broadside" itself, which amounts to Joey, who just so happens to be making a programme on the election and so has been going behind the story to get to the real heart of our democracy (he's already met Nick Clegg) declaring that MPs need to like, grow up, and Amy, who thinks benefit scroungers need to have their mansions bombed.

It was though a long weekend that went from the ridiculous to the ridiculous. On Saturday the Telegraph reported the contents of a "Foreign Office" memo that detailed how Nicola Sturgeon had supposedly told the French ambassador she'd "rather see Cameron remain as PM". Immediately Sturgeon responded she had done nothing of the sort, and demanded an inquiry into how this forgery had escaped into the wild. We've since learned it likely came from the Scotland Office, leaked by a civil servant, but not before various people claimed with all seriousness this was a conspiracy by the security services to damage the SNP.

Predictably, the reality is almost certainly far more prosaic. It's highly unlikely Sturgeon was so loose-lipped, as indeed the full memo itself says. The memo records what the French Consul-General says he was told by the ambassador, so it's the account based on what someone said to someone else to someone else about a conversation conducted via interpreters. Something almost certainly was lost in translation. Sturgeon may well have said she didn't think Miliband was prime ministerial, and probably said she expected David Cameron to remain as PM; as for whether she expressed a preference, probably not. When you then take into consideration that the Telegraph has, as Private Eye has reported, thrown its lot in fully with the Tories for the duration, it makes even less sense for it to have reported something so helpful to Labour and damaging to both the SNP and the Tories, unless this was a leak not from the Tories but a civil servant with other sympathies.

We'll have to wait for the inquiry to report to see if it does shed any night, but it has nonetheless shown both the credulousness of some who've recently aligned with the SNP and the cynicism of the older warriors. Of course Sturgeon and most within the SNP would prefer David Cameron to remain as PM, as they've prospered like never before under his tenure. For a party that has been in power in Scotland for 8 years to still be presenting itself as the outsiders and managing to pull it off is frankly alchemical. Sturgeon and Salmond's new line is about breaking up "the Westminster old boys' network", as if they're somehow new brooms rather than seasoned campaigners, while the rhetoric about "locking out the Tories" is calculated to the nth degree, designed to appeal to those still zooming while scaring the likes of the Mail. The last thing they want is any kind of arrangement with Labour, with all the unquantifiables that would entail, no longer able to claim to be protecting Scotland when cuts are inevitable. What's truly hysterical and must delight the SNP leadership are useful idiots like Adam Ramsay, who claims it'll be all the fault of the "selfish" behaviour of Jim Murphy and Scottish Labour when the Mail and Telegraph "rewrite the constitution" and install Cameron in Number 10 regardless of the election result.

Finally then to Tony Blair's flying visit to Airstrip One to declaim on how leaving the EU would be terrible for all those who don't have boltholes in one of the Middle Eastern kleptocracies. Two things made apparent from his intervention: first, that despite everything the media still absolutely loves Blair, and as proved by his donning of a high-vis jacket, the de rigueur uniform for anyone wanting to rule, he still deeply wishes he was PM. Quite whom he was meant to be appealing to though remains a mystery: regardless of the strength of his argument, and on the EU and quite possibly the EU alone he remains convincing, the Blair fan club is now so tiny as to be made up almost entirely of said journalists and fellow politicians. We might have the poor man's Blair as our current PM, but most seem to have agreed to strike that fact from the record. As for Blair himself, lovely as it would be to conclude that it's down to how he's haunted by his actions that he's slowly melting, you instead suspect his conscience remains clear. As must those who can still be found to applaud and frot a man with absolutely no shame.

Labels: election 2015, Nicola Sturgeon, politics, Scum-watch, SNP, Sun-watch, tabloid stupidity, Tony Blair

Share |

4/07/2015 11:18:00 pm | Permalink | | links to this post

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

And we're back in the room.

A scary thought: we're closing in on the 12th anniversary of the start of the 2nd Iraq war. A mundane reality: we're currently involved in the 3rd Iraq war, albeit against the self-proclaimed Islamic State rather than the Iraqi one.

Those wars are of course inextricably linked, just as they are to the first Gulf war, the one which arguably set the tone for the conflicts we've seen post-Cold War. Good ol' Saddam miscalculated in the belief that no one would mind if he gobbled up Kuwait; after all, didn't he fight the good fight against the Iranians for us? Sadly for him, the last thing the Saudis were going to stand for was a rival to their regional hegemony, and so in came the Americans, with ourselves alongside naturally. Plenty of cringing Iraqi conscripts were incinerated in the name of freedom, Saddam was redesignated as worse than Hitler, and Iraq became the country of choice for lobbing cruise missiles at whenever there was a need for a distraction from domestic politics.

Until 9/11, when it was decided evil dictators could no longer be contained lest they provide sanctuary for evil terrorists. Unfortunately, about the worst terrorist in residence in Iraq other than, err, Saddam himself was Abu Nidal, and even someone as bloodthirsty as he palled compared to al-Qaida. Instead the debate focused around weapons of mass destruction, for what even at the time was described as "policy reasons". Fact was, Saddam had to go. Less thought was put into the post-war planning, something we're still living with the consequences of today.

Oh, and there's also been an inquiry looking into all this. Frankly, I'd forgotten. Not because the Chilcot report won't be important, because it will. It just won't tell us anything we don't know already, or at least shouldn't know. A true acknowledgement of the unmitigated disaster of the Iraq war simply isn't possible, as it would mean almost every single politician and almost every single establishment figure and institution admitting they either got it wrong then or have learned precisely nothing since. Besides, the Chilcot inquiry was not established to do any such thing: it was meant, as state approved inquiries into complete and utter fuck-ups are, to look at everything that happened and then make a few recommendations that can be safely ignored or overruled on the grounds of government every so often needing to let off steam by chucking high explosives into foreign shitholes.

The reaction to the news the report will not be published until after the election is highly similar to that of the Sun dropping page 3 girls. You'd think in an era when you can within a couple of clicks see a woman in exchange for meagre payment perform some of the most degrading sexual acts imaginable that a newspaper deciding not to show naked breasts wouldn't exactly be classed as a feminist triumph (the more reflective might also wonder if the diminishing market for softcore modelling might in the long run lead to more women having to go down the hardcore route), but then nothing really surprises any more. It's a conspiracy! It must be published now, regardless of how that would be against the very law governing such inquiries! It's going to be a whitewash! It's all Tony Blair's fault! It's all Labour's fault!

And so depressingly on. The focus on Blair just proves what this has been about from the beginning. It's not about seeing Iraq for what it was, a culmination of mistakes by every arm of government, not to forget the role of the media or the public for that matter, let alone an examination of how there came to be a consensus on foreign policy which is bomb first, bomb often and only then wonder if there might be consequences down the line, it's about trying to nail custard to the wall. Even if the report says Blair took Britain to a war on a lie, which it won't, his excellency will say he did what he thought was right. He doesn't just still believe in the war, he's partial to more on the same model. Nothing is going to change the mind of a true believer.

The reason for the delay is staring everyone in the face too. It wasn't Blair or the others involved in the "Maxwellisation" process holding it up, it was the Cabinet Office, the securocrats and the Americans. The public can't possibly know what a former president and a former prime minister said to each other 12 years on, no way, however fundamental it may or may not be to how the decision to go to war came to be made. The metadata of everyone's online activity must be accessible by the state in order to protect us, but when it comes to transparency over the act that has done more than anything to increase that danger, you can whistle for it.

Whatever the conclusions the inquiry reaches, minds were made up long ago, mine included. This isn't going to be a Bloody Sunday or a Hillsborough, where the sheer force of evidence alters perceptions, despite it already having been there had you looked for it. While I seriously doubt the report would change anyone's vote, there is still a minority that regard Iraq as Labour's ultimate betrayal, holding it against the party despite nearly all those involved either having left parliament or exiting this year. You only have to see the Lib Dems, SNP and UKIP jockeying for the slightest advantage to realise just the one party has something to lose. We've waited this long to be disappointed, let down, have our prejudices confirmed; being deprived a few more weeks, months, years isn't going to make the slightest difference now.

Labels: Chilcot inquiry, Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, foreign policy, inquiries, Iraq, Iraq disaster, politics, Tony Blair

Share |

1/21/2015 09:23:00 pm | Permalink | | links to this post

Tuesday, August 05, 2014

There is a light and it never goes out.

As yesterday's post probably made clear, I'm not one for state approved close to enforced commemorations, or events in general. Remembrance Sunday just about stays on the right side of voluntary, non-politicised reflection, despite the efforts of some to turn it into a support the troops, why aren't you wearing a poppy type fest of unpleasantness. If you really were that moved, involved yesterday by the 100th anniversary of the start of four years of (then) unparalleled carnage and unnecessary suffering to turn out the lights and have a solitary candle burn between 10 and 11, good for you.

For most though I suspect it will have just passed them by entirely. There are no veterans of WWI left, and an ever dwindling number of those who can remember the conflict at all. It's also impossible to pretend WWI was a noble endeavour, at least compared to its successor, as arguable as the case is that one led inexorably to the other. You can debate all the myths or claimed myths, but none of it alters how the one real, overwhelming reason to remember is the unconscionable by modern standards waste of life, the millions sacrificed so the elite could (mostly) continue to live as they had, at least for a few more years. The collapse of empires affected us after the war, but only at the time in the form of the Bolsheviks pulling Russia out of the conflict. Yes, there were concessions given in the form of universal suffrage once it was over, and it took the rise of Nazism to make a major European war thinkable again, yet things for the most part stayed the same.

If you were expecting much, or indeed any of this to be reflected yesterday it was a forlorn hope. The leaders from the continent hinted at the role the EU has had in keeping the peace and we got the odd reference to what followed and that was pretty much your lot. Instead there was as much ceremony as you could take, a shallow sense of the loss so many went through and not much other than the hushed, reverential tones of the most maudlin reporters the BBC could get hold of in August. The Very Reverend Dr John Hall at the Westminster Abbey service went so far as to suggest, after mentioning the failed efforts to keep the peace, everyone spend a moment not in reflection but in repentance. Many of us have things we could, should repent, but guilt over or responsibility for the first world war isn't among them.

While there were then German apologies for the violation of Belgian neutrality, there weren't any admissions the war as a whole was something to be regretted, just the loss of life. Particularly abrasive was the involvement of the royals, with there being no recognition of the major role the European if not British monarchs had in the conflict and its continuation. As the Graun remarks in its leader, there was also little thought given to how much this country, Europe and the world has changed since 1914, perhaps because all those at the forefront of the commemorations would much prefer the certainties and deference of that era compared to our unruly and acerbic times. Queenie we're told was spending the day after a private memorial quietly contemplating it all, and she definitely had the right idea.

Without wanting to go the full Simon Jenkins, it's also a difficult sell for politicians who find it remarkably easy to send in the bombers, agitate for arms sales and compete over issuing the blandest statement on the massacre of innocents by allies to convince they take anything from WWI except the idea Britain always has been and always will be great. David Cameron, bless him, mentioned the role the navy played last week in evacuating British citizens from Libya without pausing to consider whether the need to do so could have been linked to the regime change NATO all but instigated in the country.

Maybe it was this disjunct between Cameron's solemn intoning of learning lessons from history at the same time as doing nothing about Gaza that finally convinced Baroness Warsi to resign, or it could have been the symbolism of extinguishing a candle at the aforementioned Westminster Abbey service. Either way, there is nothing that aggravates politicians as much as one of their colleagues suddenly having a fit of conscience: it suggests they don't have such pangs, when they do. They just don't act on them, or persuade themselves the ends justify the means. Read the contempt expressed for Clare Short in Alastair Campbell's diaries, which at times verges on the sexist, the same echoes you can clearly detect in the response from some Tories. Warsi was probably surprised to survive the reshuffle, and in her resignation letter expressly mentions both Ken Clarke and Dominic Grieve leaving the government, the loss of "their experience and expertise" as becoming "very apparent". As direct criticism of your party leader goes, it doesn't get much more personal.

Nor does describing the stance taken by the coalition as "morally indefensible". Images from Gaza of the destruction wreaked in the neighbourhoods that saw the fiercest fighting are reminiscent of the streets of Aleppo and Homs, so complete is the devastation, only this happened not over months but days. No language is strong enough to condemn Assad and his forces, yet criticism of Israeli tactics, while beefed up in recent days, has remained muted by comparison.

Warsi's resignation will be shrugged off. Not enough people care about Gaza; it won't decide many, if any votes next year. If she has kept a diary of her time in office and publishes it before the election, then many will conclude her real motivation was personal gain. Nor can we pretend this is the first government to cower when it comes to Israel; Tony Blair did everything possible during the Israel-Lebanon-Hezbollah war to delay a ceasefire, rather than try to put an end to the conflict.

Blair's legacy is even more fearful when it comes to Iraq. Under reported has been the latest major propaganda release from ISIS I mentioned last week. It contains what I can only describe as the most disturbing video footage I have ever seen, and I'm sorry to say I've watched a lot of jihadi releases and "real gore" clips. Some begging for their lives, dozens of Shia men are taken into sandy wasteland where all ordered to lie on their fronts. A masked fighter then walks along the line, carefully firing a single shot from an AK47 into each man's head. In another section, a group of men are hurried to the bank of a river (as the footage is apparently from Tikrit, it has to be the Tigris), one of their captors slapping them on the back as they pass. Once there, on a concrete section smeared with blood, each is taken to the edge and a single shot from a pistol fired into their heads, the victim then pushed or thrown into the water. In its former incarnations ISIS carried out a number of executions of groups of men which were filmed, but never were so many killed as in this video. Nor did we see them being led to their death, the majority going meekly, in the same way as so many thousands of Jews were taken to their deaths by the Einsatzgruppen, walking in line, told to lie side by side, waiting for it to be their turn to be shot in the back of the head. A group that is unafraid to record its crimes against war, against humanity, potentially the beginnings of a genocide, is one that apparently believes its otherwise ridiculous claims of being the Islamic state, immovable. A century on from the "war to end all wars", it's the far more recent ones we entered into that should be reflected on, troubling us most.

Labels: Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, David Cameron, Gaza, history, Iraq, politics, Sayeeda Warsi, Tony Blair, WWI

Share |

8/05/2014 11:59:00 pm | Permalink | | links to this post

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

A dangerous Melanie Phillips.

If there's one thing you can rely on when a new pronouncement emerges from the Office of Tony Blair, it's that it will be taken very seriously by both devotees and critics of our dear former prime minister alike. The responses might not be correspondingly dry, but they amount to the same thing. It's therefore not true to say that Blair's sermons don't have influence, especially when there are still those within government who share his increasingly worrying world view.

For Blair has at last dropped any real moderating factors from his black and white vision of the Middle East (and much of Africa for that matter) and what we should be doing to encourage "change". The odd thing is that Blair's idea of reform post-Arab spring seems remarkably close to the world prior to 9/11. Tony has you see clearly been revisiting Iraq and where it all went wrong, probably in anticipation of the Chilcot inquiry passing judgement on him. The problem wasn't the intervention itself or the lies leading up to it, rather the fact that both Sunni and Shia extremists immediately rose up against their supposed liberators. Where al-Qaida previously had barely existed, within a year the most powerful franchise yet was established and on its way to controlling vast swathes of the north of the country.

Apart from Blair not admitting it was his very intervention that played exactly into al-Qaida's hands and prompted the biggest surge in jihadi recruitment since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, as numerous commentators have pointed out, and ignoring all the mistakes made by the occupying forces in the first few years, his analysis is reasonably sound. Where he then gets it spectacularly wrong is in taking this view of Islamist extremism being the main factor holding the region back and applies it across the board. Yes, he is at pains to say there are other forces at work and that Islamism is not Islam, but frankly it's becoming more and more difficult to take his protestations seriously.

Blair's solution is remarkably simple. The threat is so serious and affects both ally and ostensible rival alike that differences should be set aside to challenge it. We should work with both Russia and China as they have their own problems with Islamists. Even more dramatically, such is the danger posed by the extremists in the Syrian opposition that we should aim for a negotiated settlement where Assad stays in power, at least for the time being. Only if he rejects such a generous offer would we then look to help the same opposition through imposing a no fly zone. This would obviously mean something approaching war, although we would demand at the same time that the extremist groups get no help from the surrounding states. You know, just like we have for the last couple of years now, and what an overwhelming success it's been.

This new thesis from the man who previously gave us the Chicago speech is riddled with contradictions, and Blair must realise know it. To be sure, he had no objection to dealing with authoritarian states when in office so long as they either supported or didn't interfere with the West's wider foreign policy aims, hence why he brought Gaddafi's Libya in from the cold and had no qualms whatsoever about shutting down the Serious Fraud Office investigation into fraud in the al-Yamamah deal with Saudi Arabia. This new emphasis on realpolitik though suggests that despite continuing to support the Iraq war, given the chance to do things differently he most likely would. Considering the more barmy neo-cons have insisted in the past that the Iraq intervention was one of the catalysts of the Arab spring, this is quite the Damascene conversion.

Then again, Blair clearly has no love for the Arab spring or for the values those who initially rose up had. He says our ultimate principle should be support for religious freedom and open, rule based economies. Note that he doesn't mention democracy, a word he only uses three times throughout his entire screed, one of those in reference to Israel. Like so much of the speech, the reason is simple: democracy, as seen in Egypt and in Palestine, can lead to the people voting for the very Islamists he is so opposed to. As Blair sets out, whether they be Hamas or the Muslim Brotherhood, and regardless of whether they eschew violence, "their overall ideology is one which inevitably creates the soil in which such extremism can take root". He goes on to say Islamism's very implementation is incompatible with the modern world, yet apparently this is its very danger. One would suspect that if this were the case Iran's theocracy would have long since departed the scene, yet still it remains with us, in spite also of the sanctions bearing down on it. Perhaps its survival can be put down to its managed democracy, but again, doesn't this rather undermine Blair's case?

Well yes, but it sure doesn't stop him. Egypt then, rather than Syria, is where the future of the region hangs. Despite coming to power in what were widely regarded as fair elections, the Brotherhood simply had to be overthrown, as it was "taking over the traditions and institutions of the country". It wasn't just an ordinary protest that led to the ousting of Morsi, it was "an absolutely necessary rescue of the nation". Any concerns we have about the over a thousand Morsi supporters who were massacred in the aftermath, or the 500+ protesters sentenced to death we should put aside, as we help the country "cross over to a better future". Blair in other words supports wholeheartedly the restoration of the Mubarak era, just with a different general in charge. Nor it seems should we worry that supporting the coup might encourage the very belief change can't be achieved through the ballot box, leading to the exact violence Blair so abhors, or about the journalists imprisoned on false charges, the kind of actions we so condemn of other authoritarian states, or indeed the very people who demanded true democracy and who want neither the army or the Brotherhood; all these are by the by when defeating the true threat posed by the Islamists is vastly more important.

The countries that go unmentioned ought to speak just as loudly as those he goes through in turn. Strangely absent is Turkey, again perhaps because it would otherwise undermine his case. On the face of it Erodgan's AKP would fit the bill: a party that bit by bit seems to be undermining democracy, which supports Islamists in Syria and describes children killed by its forces as "terrorists". It remains however as popular if not more popular than ever, and has also established precisely the open, rule based economy Blair favours, to the point where the Gezi Park protests started because of the proposed development of yet another shopping mall. For all Blair's radicalism, he also still can't bring himself to criticise Saudi Arabia by name, instead only remarking on the absurdity of spending billions

of $ on security arrangements and on defence to protect ourselves against the consequences of an ideology that is being advocated in the formal and informal school systems and in civic institutions of the very countries with whom we have intimate security and defence relationships.

It's this cowardice, along with his rejection of what he calls the "absolutely rooted desire on the part of Western commentators" to "eliminate the obvious common factor in a way that is almost wilful" that gives the game away. Just as he spoke after 9/11 of "re-ordering this world around us", his ultimate desire remains the same even if his methods are now different. Regardless of how just the grievances of those who have turned to violence and/or Islamism are, they have to be defeated whatever the cost. It doesn't matter if those doing the smiting are as tyrannical as those they are fighting against, like the Russians in Chechnya, or the Chinese against the Uighurs, both of whom Blair wants onside for his battle, such is the danger of the ideology that we must if necessary make uncomfortable bedfellows. We shall go on pussyfooting around Saudi Arabia's sponsorship of the very people Blair proselytises against, while keeping the pressure up on the potential ally we could have in Iran. We must hug Israel ever closer, as the real problem is with the divisions among the Palestinians, again caused by Islamism.

This, remember, is the Quartet's peace envoy. He is also a man who regardless of the criticism, retains influence. He ought to be thought of after this as Melanie Phillips with a hotline to the world's leaders. And if that isn't scary, I'm not sure what is.

Labels: Blair Middle East, Egypt, foreign policy, Iraq, Islamists, politics, Syria, Tony Blair

Share |

4/23/2014 11:59:00 pm | Permalink | | links to this post

Monday, April 14, 2014

How long before we need an inquiry into the inquiry?

Governments change, ministers come and go, but if there's something that doesn't alter in our modern political culture, it's there's always one inquiry or another stuck in the mire. For a long time it was the Bloody Sunday inquiry, which took 12 years to report on the events of a single, if extraordinary, confused and controversial day. More recently we had Sir Peter Gibson's cancelled inquiry into extraordinary rendition and the British state's alleged complicity in it. Gibson's short report sat waiting to be published for 18 months, as arguments raged about whether a single, if crucial strand of correspondence within MI6 concerning the mistreatment at Bagraim air base could be declassified. Not fully, it was decided, Gibson giving in. Another inquiry now waits in the wings, due to conducted by those thoroughly decent chaps at the Intelligence and Security Committee.

We are though forgetting the Chilcot inquiry, aka the umpteenth attempt to have a definitive inquiry into how we went to war with Iraq, which started hearing public evidence in November of 2009. Almost five years on, and three years since it finished its public hearings, we're still waiting for the report to published. First the suggestion was the "Maxwellisation" process of writing to those criticised was likely to begin by the middle of last year; then came the news there were disagreements between Chilcot and the Cabinet Office over the publication of documents and memorandums between Tony Blair and George Bush. It wasn't clear and still isn't clear now whether this the result of complaints by Blair or the state refusing to declassify this higher level material, or whether the US may also have objected. The Graun reported at the end of last year that a compromise had been reached and the inquiry was likely to reach a conclusion by mid-year; now the Independent says those stories were "mere optimism" and the negotiations are still deadlocked. With the "Maxwellisation" process still to start, and indeed with the very conclusions apparently yet to be written, even if there's a deal during the summer recess it seems unlikely the report will be published until this time next year.

Complaining that this is ridiculous seems to miss the point. Every inquiry dealing with "sensitive material" is always caught up in seemingly endless discussion about what can and can't be safely made public lest national security be affected. After all, when the MoD decides to block publication of a book it first commissioned, it doesn't seem quite as ludicrous more care is taken over personal communications between world leaders. It does however suggest delay is built into these inquiries, governments always believing the more time passes between a controversy and its final resolution the less chance that something beyond criticism of those responsible is taken.

This remains the case regardless of changes in government, as exemplified by the cabinet secretary Jeremy Heywood. Without letting Blair or Gordon Brown for that matter off the hook, the delay seems to rest with the refusal of the Cabinet Office to countenance releasing anything in the wider public interest that is also secret. Hence Heywood's visit to the Guardian to demand the return of the Snowden files, where he made clear the government will decide when debates on such subjects begin and end. This would also tally with the news from Craig Murray that the government has lobbied the Americans on the release of the Senate Intelligence Report on rendition, lest it undermine their efforts to block legal action by Abdul Hakim Belhaj over his rendition to Libya. It was after all the release by an American court of far more damning evidence of the torture of Binyam Mohamed that led the High Court here to release the "seven paragraphs".

The very least we deserve is to know precisely why publication continues to be delayed and by whom. It's all very well for Nick Clegg to say the report should be published now, without giving any suggestion as to whether he has done anything practical to smooth or speed the process, but we need more. With Blair continuing to defend the war, it's difficult to see how he could be trying to delay the inevitable: he is more than ready to brazen out whatever Chilcot chooses to throw at him. Instead it once again seems to be the secret state acting as a block, always wanting to be in control, while refusing to take responsibility. Once Clegg and his party would have promised to try and do something about that.

Labels: Chilcot inquiry, Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, inquiries, Iraq, Iraq disaster, politics, Tony Blair

Share |

4/14/2014 08:38:00 pm | Permalink | | links to this post

Obsolete

Wednesday, July 06, 2016

Chilcot.

Wednesday, June 08, 2016

Where are the Blairs of yesteryear?

Thursday, October 29, 2015

Want to come over and Netflix and Chilcot?

Thursday, August 13, 2015

The road to Jeremy.

Thursday, July 23, 2015

"It's not difficult, Manuel. This is not a proposition from Wittgenstein."

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Much like pulling teeth.

Monday, June 08, 2015

Iraq and othering.

Tuesday, April 07, 2015

An election campaign broadside on behalf of all lazy Brits.

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

And we're back in the room.

Tuesday, August 05, 2014

There is a light and it never goes out.

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

A dangerous Melanie Phillips.

Monday, April 14, 2014

How long before we need an inquiry into the inquiry?

About

Links

UK Blogs and Comment

Elsewhere

Junk

Last posts

Archives