http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/09/world/eu....html?ref=world

LONDON — After outmaneuvering what amounted to an attempted coup last week by members of his own cabinet, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, confronted disastrous European election results Monday that could amplify calls within his party for his ouster.
Skip to next paragraph
Related
Disaffection Dominates European Voting (June 8, 2009)

With nearly all the votes counted, Mr. Brown’s Labor Party was beaten into a humiliating third place behind the small, euroskeptic United Kingdom Independence Party and the opposition Conservatives in first place.

David Cameron, the Conservative leader, said the vote showed a “desperately weak and divided government” locked with its internal adversaries in a “slow dance of political death.”

Is the the end of Labour? What are the chances he can turn this around?
Also, please bear with me here, what are the policy differences between Labour and the Tories?
What is David Cameron's solutions. Also What is going on with the Liberal Dems? I remember Charles Kennedy (long gone) was the first politician to openly speak out against the Iraq War.
I guess I am asking for UK Politics 1012

Hi James ... I remember you asking about the lib dems and Charles Kennedy.

I'll expand later when I'm not trying to type on my iPod but the quick answer is the labour party ceased to have any significant difference to the Tories once tony bliar hijacked it. Gordon Brown is getting the blame but in fact labour had ceased to have any point long before he took over. They are now defunct and it saddens meore than I can say and I hate bliar even more than I hate thatcher. Teflon fuckin' tony.

And I didn't cheer when he was elected because I knew it was all over. I hate being proved fuckin' right

Tony Benn was on Channel Four last week making the point that people said exactly the same about the Labour Party when Ramsay Macdonald formed a coalition with the Tories in the 1920s, and within a generation, it had recovered electorally and produced the Attlee government. To an extent, it's cyclical.

And I honestly believe that if John Smith had lived (and I wish he had) the history of the last fifteen years would have been much the same. Blaming Blair ignores the reality of the prevailing mood in the Labour Party in the Nineties.

As for the Lib Dems, it's impossible to say what they stand for: some are to the Left of Labour, some are to the Right of the Tories. And they are ultimately opportunistic.

If Cameron moves back to the Right, he'll win a landslide next year, because the mood of the country is shifting in that direction; if he stays towards the Centre it will be closer.

If Cameron moves back to the Right, he'll win a landslide next year, because the mood of the country is shifting in that direction; if he stays towards the Centre it will be closer.

I am not sure what you mean. I understand right and conservative have different meanings in the UK as opposed to the US. Does that mean privatizaton of the healtcare HMO's
bigger military more religious involvement/ Do you understand my confusion as an American?

Yes, I understand entirely because I find US politics equally confusing.
'Moving Right' is probably a lazy way of putting it: the problem is that (for example) any suggestion of cutting NHS services or education is going to be extremely unpopular. However, cutting 'public spending' by reducing 'bureaucracy', 'waste' and 'red tape' is a vote-winner. The difference between the NHS (as a state-run operation) and 'free healthcare' based on some kind of publicly funded insurance but with private sector providers (which as I understand it, is what proponents of free healthcare in the States campaign for) is actually much greater and more important than many people recognise.
There probably aren't many votes in 'social conservatism' as it is seen in the US (though there may be some in reduced government activity to promote 'social liberalism' purely on the grounds of cost.) And religion and politics tend, in practice, to be very well separated in the UK (in my view exactly because we have an established Church).
The vote winners for the Tories will be in opposition to the EU; integration and the increased power of EU institutions is very unpopular (which is why UKIP beat the Lib Dems for the second successive European election). Paradoxically, this isn't necessarily a 'Right' position: there is a lot of opposition to the EU on the Left and there was an anti-EU Left campaign this time. Reducing immigration would also be very popular; so would tougher laws on benefits for the long term unemployed. And reducing Public Expenditure, particularly if they could show that they'd do it by cutting unpopular things like ID cards, bureaucracy and extravagant government IT projects would also gain support. To a considerable extent it's about relatively superficial gestures.
I don't think that there is a clear 'Right' alternative economically, unless you regard a more protectionist approach as 'Right' (and I don't).
As far as Foreign Policy, apart from the EU and the military is concerned, there probably isn't anything that the Tories would have done differently to Labour over the last ten years, though they've had to be seen to oppose some of it. There is no money for greater military spending, though I could see them scrapping Trident and putting the money into equipping British troops better.
I should say that I'm not advocating any of this (though there are things I'd like to see, especially in relation to the EU); it's just observation.

Thank you for that clarification: The next few years are going to be very interesting. Especially, in Amsterdam
who the new right deals not just immigration but with staples of Dutch Liberalism mainly legalized drugs and prostitution.

Indeed. Which is why I had such a problem staying a member of the Labour Party.
How could I be a member of the Labour party when the government, made up of Labour Party members, went for ten years behaving like a bunch of tories.

I've heard people saying that it'll be a lot worse in Britain if Cameron gets in.
Apart from an assault on the NHS I can't think of anything he could do to take the UK further to the right than the likes of Blair, Straw, Brown and Reid have already.

Conservatives Cancelling Trident? Fuckin' ell! I'd vote Tory just to see that.

my tory MP (the how much does it cost to change 25 lightbulbs one) voted against the war.

bloddy labour party subs seem to have gone up so i have cancelled Alberr's direct debit. fuck em. Billy was going to vote green but voted for 'gordo' to spite hazel blears. Ironically i think her resignation. which some people are saying accounted for the BNP getting in, probably prompted a few people to do the same.

The real problem with the Labour Party is that since it abandoned socialism (and clause 4) it doesn't have a commitment to bring the wealth of the nation into the hands of the people who created the wealth. It is fully committed to capitalism and capitalism sucks.

The consequence is Gordo and Cameron vying with each other for popular 'policies' which they conjour out of a hat to entice the public to vote for them.

People can have no idea what they are actually voting for.

Cameron has come across as being much more 'in charge' that gordo over the expenses debacle and so despite the duck moats the tories have not fared so badly because of it (is my theory).





nb: i wonder if the changing of 25 lightbulbs was a mass conversion to green ones.. now that 100watters are outlawed.

I fucking hope so! We do not deserve to be treated with any respect. We not only fooled people into an unjust, illegal and immoral war against the people of Iraq we also charged the taxpayer inordinate amounts of money for 'second' homes and lavish dinner parties for our posh friends while the people we pretend to support are losing everything. We get our party funds from rich and partisan millionaires, we tell lies, and we are a total disgrace to the International Socialist movement.

Hurry up and die New Labour and take all your middle class trappings with you, perhaps we will be able to build a new democratic Socialist party over the next fifty years or so that will wipe the shame of the Blair years from our history.

Is the Labour Party finished?

Of course it's not.

However the "New Labour Project" of the boom years of the 1990's is definitely on its last legs and when Labour lose the next election, as looks likely at the moment, then that will be the end of New Labour. The gang of Oxbridge carpetbaggers like Blair, Brown , Mandelson, Campbell, etc who started this project will have to find something else to do. Some have already jumped ship. Many more will follow because when Labour lose the next election there is likely to be a deep soul-searching in the party and probably a shift to the left which will happen at a time of deep economic recession, high unemployment, strikes and civil unrest.

Now is not the time for socialists to be leaving the party, Alberr.

Outside the organised working class, i.e. the trade unions and the Labour Party, there is nothing!

The Communist Party is almost non-existent, the various ultra-left sects like the Socialist Workers Party, the Socialist Party and the Workers this-and-that Party, will never gain the ear of the British working class. The whole of the last 100 years since the working class set up the Labour Party shows that no matter how trecherous and cowardly is the Labour leadership the British workers will not abandon the party for another party. Even the Independent Labour Party with 100,000 followers sunk without trace. When the working class are disillusioned with the leadership they simply do not go out to vote, they do not vote for other parties.

The building of a socialist party will take place within the Labour Party and the place for socialists like you Alberr, and Beryl and Martyn and others who want a better world, is inside the Labour Party, even if you have to wear a clothes peg on your nose for a while till the stink of New Labour clears.

Part of the New Labour Project was to turn the Labour Party into a US-style Democratic Party and they have failed.
Of course they have done enormous damage to the party. The socialist aim of the party, clause 4 of the constitution, was deleted at the stroke of a pen, the National Executive Committee was emasculated, the conference was turned into a rally and the internal democratic structure was dismantled in favour of handing power to regional officials and, as a consequence, many good socialists simply left the party. But the one thing they failed to do was to break the link of the trade unions to the Labour Party and this link guarantees the allegiance of the organised working class to the Labour Party. All the other damage can and will be repared when the British workers next move into action.

History shows that when the British workers move into action on the industrial front they do so through the trade unions and when they move into action on the political front they do so through the Labour Party. The sects are only fooling themselves and wasting their lives when they demand the working class should follow them when they set up "pure" "revolutionary" unions and parties. Like I said earlier, outside the labour and trade union movement there is nothing! The battle for socialism will take place inside the unions and the Labour Party.

When you go into battle you can't always choose the battleground.

I don't think that the Tories would have done anything different in terms of foreign policy. The fact is that New Labour invested heavily, up until 2007, in public services. I certainly disagreed with much of their 'modernisation' programme, but the fact is that the Tories simply would not have spent the money.
If the choice was hospitals built under PFI or built through conventional public spending, I'd prefer the second option; but the choice was hospitals built under PFI or no new hospitals..





I agree with that to a considerable extent (though I am old enough to remember when adherence to Clause 4 was despised by the Left); the problem is that the Labour Party was not going to get elected on the kind of manifesto we fought on in 1983, or even in 1987. John Smith, Brown and Blair all recognised that. Those of us who supported the New Labour project didn't do so because we wanted to 'abandon socialism'; we did it because we could not see another way to get rid of the Tories.



Again I agree with some of that as well. However, it's not just about kissing Duchesses (or their modern equivalent):what has alienated Labour's core support, above all else, is the pursuit of economic policies that put the interests of capitalism ahead of those of working people and policies particularly the smoking ban, which is destroying the fabric of working class community life, that have convinced large numbers of natural Labour voters that the Party simply doesn't understand or care any more.
The preoccupation with constitutional reform is an irrelevancy to most traditional Labour voters, and in truth, the war has not impacted much on Labour's support.



I agree with most of that, though I'm afraid that the Unions have become increasingly remote and bureaucratic: the Clause 4 debate should have been an opportunity to democratise the Labour Party and ensure that commitments to environmental protection and equal rights were enshrined in its constitution. My Union, however, didn't even let me vote on it.
It also has to be said that the economic and social landscape has altered massively. I would have agreed with your optimism twenty years ago, but now, I'm not sure that there is enough of an 'organised working class' left to make any difference.
The unpalatable truth I think is that the Left in this country has to choose between sticking to its socialist principles (and staying in the wilderness) or making compromises with capitalism to secure sufficient support from the middle classes to get elected.
I suspect that both paths will be explored over the next generation; however, the next time we go down the second route, I hope we'll learn the lessons of the New Labour project, which are that we have to govern for the working class and shift some real economic power to them. I don't think we'll learn those lessons if we focus on the personalities of Blair, Brown and Mandelson.

Quite, since Blair et al have finished what Thatcher started.



You say "has" there. I thought we had to make that choice in 97. Or we embraced the "second route" without fully realising it. I certainly voted for Blair in 97 because he was Labour. I even voted for him the next time round despite knowing that I'd been shafted. It was better than the alternative. But not the third time. By then the Liberal Democrats, bless their unelectable cotton socks, were so much farther to the left than NEW Labour that I would have been betraying my socialist principles to vote for Blair.

I think I implied this earlier but the choice now is between two conservative parties. The Tories and New Labour.

Broadly I'm in agreement with your last paragraph, (and now have a question for you which I'll ask later), except that I think it's important to pay very close attention to those particular personalities thus avoiding any future candidates who bear even the slightest resemblance. (And the irony of my wholehearted and now diminishing support for Obama is not lost.)

My question is; How is it, bearing in mind our broad agreement vis a vis the last ten years, you have remained a stalwart apologist for Blair's crimes and misdemeanours whilst I jumped ship about four years ago?

It just now occurs to me that almost nobody in Britain thinks of themselves as working class.

Is this the end of Labour in the UK?

Alberr said: -



JBoyd said: -



Come off it! Smoking bans might well be seen by some as interfering with good old working class culture but there are many of us who welcomed the legislation; we are not all neanderthals. I accept that most progressive reforms are seen by my old friends and neighbours as middle class interference in our way of life, but we do grudgingly accept them eventually. Like wearing seat belts, or stopping pubs from barring black people or landladies from banning 'Irish and dogs'. But we still don't have a decent, affordable, NHS dentist within reasonable distance.

I agree entirely with the point you make about us 'natural' Labour Party voters. New Labour doesn't understand us and it doesn't care about us any more. Our hopes for social housing, health, and education have been eroded to the point of no return. "They only want our votes" is what I hear all the time and some touch the side of their nose in that old knowing way, meaning that if they vote at all then it won't be for Blair's people.
For instance, the perception of many of our people is that race and immigration has had a huge negative impact on our lives, our income and our security. The perception is that New Labour does not understand or care about these fears. It is the failure of New Labour to leave their well heeled perches in Westminster and come down among us and convince working people that immigrants are not stealing their jobs or Muslims are not planning to blow them up that has enabled the fascists to step in and fill the credibility gap. Instead, New Labour sit on their backsides and willingly agree to a whole raft of legislation that alienates large parts of our population and encourages the extremists.

I was one of the two million people who took to the streets of London to protest about the possibility of an invasion of Iraq. In a country of sixty odd million people we were a minority, a substantial minority but still a minority. I doubt if many of those protesters who initially voted for New Labour ever did so again. I didn't and I am a party member. But I accept that we probably did not have a serious impact on the New Labour vote. However, we did contribute to their declining support, and we still do.

New Labour must be buried, a painful process, but necessary if we are ever again to see ourselves as the democratic socialist future for the UK.

However, unless the Labour Party has a serious rethink and reform along the lines of what Kinnock & Smith tried to achieve, isn't there a possibilty that Nu NewLabour will be just a move closer again to the Tories? I'd reckon if Labour want to be considered viable, touching base with the likes of the Socialist Labour Party would be a useful move, but probably only palateable after 4 years of Cameron

That's a fair enough question; there are several answers:
1. I never had very high expectations of Blair as PM. I would have loved another Attlee, but I expected another Wilson, and that's what we got. I think the people that Obama will disappoint and anger most are those with unrealistic ambitions for him.
2. Without opening up a discussion that we've gone over a great deal, I think that Blair was broadly right about Iraq.
3. I think that a lot of New Labour's record is still defensible: there was, for example, a very noticeable improvement in the NHS in the first five years of the government.
4. Most importantly, I think that there was at the heart of the 'New Labour Project' an untested assumption that a Centre-Left government could manage the economy in a way that ensured stability and growth whilst using social policy to tackle inequality. With hindsight that assumption has been proved false (not because of the economic crisis, but because social policy has failed to deliver greater equality). That judgement is based on hindsight, and I don't think we were wrong to try, given the conditions.
5. Maybe I'm just a tribalist, but I've never felt able to trust the Lib Dems; too many of them are too far to the right on economics, and they're too opportunistic.
6. The choice has been for the last decade and a half, New Labour or the Tories. I think that what happened in the Eighties showed that a real Socialist alternative is not an electable option (the various Left projects have failed to achieve anything - not even visible success in local government. It's very telling that papers like the Guardian are seen as Left-wing, because a lot of what they argue for is actually very centrist.
7. Actually, I think people overestimate the power of politicians; it's the bureaucrats that really run the country.
8. Maybe I hung on longer to the belief that Labour would move back to the Left in its third term out of wishful thinking; however, I still can't quite believe that noone actually challenged Brown for the leadership.

All the Best

Many of us however were thoroughly alienated by it and simply stopped going to the pubs, clubs and bingo halls, many of which have closed as a result.
Even if you accept the evidence that passive smoking is a health risk (and I think that it is wildly exaggerated), it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the fact smoking is treated more severely than other habits that expose others to a degree of risk (flying and driving, for example) is the result of anything other than the social profiles of those who do it.
If they had wanted to, the government could have legislated to allow smokers the freedom to smoke whilst giving non-smokers the choice to avoid passive smoking, and protecting everyone except smokers from the minimal risks involved. Instead, they rode roughshod over the views of smokers. And incidentally, the smoking ban was never mentioned in a Labour manifesto.



I have my reservations about the idea that Labour politicians should be convincing people of a particular view if there is no dialogue: I'd rather see them coming off their perches to listen.
And whilst I abhor racism in any form, I don't think that the idea that immigration has made the economic situation tougher for the working class can be dismissed easily. The worst aspect of New Labour's record is that unemployment has remained at historically high levels even during the good times, whilst immigration has to quote Mervyn King, 'exerted a downward pressure on wage inflation'. What all those captains of industry have meant when they've praised the work ethic of East European workers is that they are grateful that they don't have to employ people born in the UK (Black, White and Asian) who would expect better conditions and pay.

Dear JB!,

What on earth possessed you to put this at 2 in your list?



I stopped reading then, my suspicion that your were barking mad confirmed!

After a few moments to recover my composure I did you the courtesy of reading the rest.

On 1, I was decidedly madder than you! I actually bought into a lot of what Blair said. Pre Iraq, of course.
Post Iraq I just hated the ground he walked on and was angry at myself for not having seen through the twat in 97.

3. That's about it really. A labour government could hardly have done anything else unless they were keen to find out what a successful Guy Fawkes plot might feel like.

I'll give you point 4 too.

Not giving you 5 cus I'm not sure what you're on about. Tribalism?

6? Yep. Despite the fact that everything Scargill said would happen, happened, he still fucked it up for socialism in the UK.

7? I suppose. But don't the bureaucrats share power with the corporations? No. that's what happens here in the US.

8?

I think it was because everybody thought that Gordy would move the party a little way over to the left and he hasn't and we're all left thinking that those complete arseholes who say "all politicians are the same, they're only in it for themselves, they just tell you what you want to hear to get elected and then do what they like, that's why I never vote", might be on to something.

Oh sod it! I can't let this go JB...



Right about what exactly? That Saddam was not a very nice man? Fucking good job Tony brought that to my attention because I would have gone through life thinking that a brutal fascist dictator, an on /off puppet of the CIA and serial murderer was actually an OK sort of chap. Phew!

Everything else? Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.

Name something...

WRONG!

Blair was and is a nasty, cowardly, opportunistic - just like the Lib Dems eh? JB - little shit.
Didn't even have the courage to declare his own faith openly for fear of the effect it might have on his election chances. Like any socialist would give a toss what church you worshipped in.

Aaaaaaaaah. That's better.

I think I did, too; it's just that it was very clear to me that he wasn't saying 'I'm going to govern from the Left'; he was saying 'I will lead and govern from the Centre because that is the only realistic strategy'.



I think Blair deserves some credit for the fact that Kosovo did not become another region on the list of modern genocides. And even more so, for the end of war in Northern Ireland. Others deserve credit too, and some deserve more, but whoever was UK PM could always have made a pig's ear of the peace process. I think that any Tory Premier and many Labour PMs would have blown it.



I meant that my attachment to the Labour Party is partly emotional and historic, and in that context, the Liberals are no more attractive than the Conservatives (and in some ways they are less so).



Agreed; and the Militant Tendency also did immense damage by virtually destroying Socialism in the Labour Party.




Agreed, but my main point was that elected politicians are much less powerful than they should be in a democracy.



I think that there was a lot of wishful thinking about Brown on the Left; he never did or said anything to dispel the impression that he was to Blair's Left, but his record showed that that impression was not founded on anything concrete. I actually think he's less honest than Blair in some ways. But the key was that people assumed that the apparent personal tensions represented ideological difference, and they never did. Which is another reason that I think preoccupation with personalities over politics is dangerous.



I think he was right in believing that the Iraqis would be better off and that the world would be safer if Saddam was removed, and I think that is borne out by events. I think that he was wrong about WMD, but wrong on the basis of flawed intelligence that had credibility at the time. I think that he was wrong to go along with Bush in bypassing the UN, and in failing to put a post-Saddam plan in place. But I don't think that any of the other substantially different scenarios would have been better. Sanctions were (according to people like Galloway) killing hundreds of thousands before the invasion. If they'd been lifted with Saddam still in power, I think he would have re-armed and attacked Iran or Israel or Kuwait again. Of course, Saddam was a product of British Imperialism and US Cold War strategy, but that doesn't alter what he was.
Of course, I don't imagine for one moment that you'd agree with any of that.
However, I will also say that I think Blair would have been just as despised by the Left if Iraq and Afghanistan had never happened.

Saddam was an arsehole of epic proportions but even he'd have had trouble knocking off as many Iraqui's as we have. Fact is he had no desire to be as much of a killer as GWB and Tony.
He was a poser and a bully and getting rid of him was an absolute piece of piss that wasn't worth the effort.

A threat to the world? For a minute back in our last bit of discourse I thought you'd got better but here you are again with a pair of underpants on your head and pencils up your nose, going "Wibble".

I'll give you NI.

Thing is it was 10 years or so squandered as far as I and most socialists are concerned.

Alberr said: -

JBoyd said: -



Ho! Ho! You are a smoker then ... well you have my sympathy. It is one of the worst addictions and very difficult to overcome. I remember it well and am daily only one cigarette away from starting all over again. My mother in law would support your comments. She's eighty four, smokes like a chimney, and blames Tony Blair for the fact that she has to go out into the pub garden every twenty minutes or so just to have a drag of her second favourite addiction. (Blair was even hypocritical over that particular issue, riding roughshod over his own Government legislation which banned cigarette advertising in favour of his millionaire friend Ecclestone, whose wealth depended on it).
Is there any evidence that the smoking ban was directly responsible for the drop in attendance at the pub or the club? My own recollection is that pubs were being converted into estate agents' offices, along with churches, long before the ban came in. That is just a subjective recollection of course.
Bingo halls were like the football pools. However broke we were my father always, without fail, submitted his pools coupons. In my mind I can still hear the paperboy walking our streets on a Saturday evening chanting, "Star, News and Standard, CLASSIFIED!" and me and my mates chasing after him to get the 'classifieds' for our dads. (The classified results were the final match results and the bible everyone used to see if their pools coupons had 'come up'). My point in this nostalgic rambling is that, however poor we were we still managed to get our postal orders off to Littlewoods. My own family were a bit snooty about Bingo and didn't subscribe but many of our neighbours did. Even the poor bloody pensioners managed to pay a regular visit to 'The Bingo'. It was so much a part of our culture that I just can't see a smoking ban putting off enough people to produce a significant decline in business.
Maybe The 'Pools' and 'The Bingo' have been largely replaced by other, less communal but more easily available activities, like the Lotteries' and scratchcards.

Alberr said: -



JBoyd said: -



We seem to be in agreement; listening would be very welcome and almost unique for New Labour. After using their ears to take on board what our fears are they should use their intellect to find solutions and use their mouths to convince us that that their solutions are acceptable, that we do have a future, that we should be proud of the improved wages and working conditions negotiated by our Unions and that our future does not include fascism.
Today’s announcement that 900 British workers in the oil industry have been sacked by their French employers is going to add more fuel to the flames over the next few days. The lads went on a wild cat strike because they thought that their employer had broken an agreement. They thought they had a ‘no redundancy’ agreement. The employer clearly thought it wasn’t binding and sacked several workers. At the same time the employer, criminally provocative, was recruiting East European workers. As you say, cheap, non organised labour.
However complicated the situation might be, the lads on the picket lines see direct confirmation of what the fascists are chanting. That there is blatant discrimination in support of foreign immigrants and against British workers in our country. Already we have the union jack flying over picket lines. Will the New Labour MP’s find time off from filling in their expenses claims to get down into their constituencies and listen to these workers? Will they take up their cudgels to support these workers and punish their employer. I doubt it. I predict that, if they do anything at all, they will consider even more stringent anti immigrant policies to pacify the fascists and whinge on about the misplaced power of the Trades Unions.
They won’t lift a finger for the lads who will lose their jobs.

Joe Jackson, is that you?

online gaming and tv 'quizzes'

I think we probably do agree.
I think that 'globalisation' in the sense of the free movement of capital, goods and labour, is fundamentally bad for the working class of all countries.

Littlewoods? Yes, I have fond memories of trying to fathom the differences between the various perm plans; the pools had a mystique that the lottery will never have.
I don't think there's any doubt that the smoking ban has led to pubs and other venues shutting. Of course, there are other reasons - the breweries, or more specifically the big pub chains are also doing a lot of damage - but if you look at the figures (20 licensed premises a week closing, 57% of landlords attributing loss of trade to the ban), at the very least it's been the straw that's broken a lot of camels' backs, and it's more probable that it's actually closed a lot of places.
I actually feel angriest for the older generation who used to frequent the Bingo halls and backstreet pubs - the real old-fashioned places that felt like your grandparents' front room. They have been left with nowhere to go and they, more than most, deserve better.

I'd suggest that the words 'poser' and 'bully' in this context are ridiculous: Peter Andre might be described as a 'poser' and Gordon Ramsey as a 'bully'. Saddam was a brutal dictator on a par with the worst of the Twentieth Century. He invaded two sovereign states, brutalised and slaughtered tens (and probably hundreds) of thousands of his own people and not only sought to develop, but actually used WMDs, against enemy forces and more horribly, civilians. His record in 2003 was worse, judged on genocidal crimes, aggression against neighbouring states and possibly the use of torture than Hitler's was up until mid-1938. He probably was responsible for more deaths (if the casualties of the war with Iran are included) than have occurred since the invasion, and actually it is arguable that much of the violence post-2003 would have occurred anyway once his regime was ended, regardless of the way it ended (though that doesn't excuse the lack of a post-war plan on the part of the coalition).

I don't think I could make any sound with pencils up my nose....

It's certainly possible. I know because I've tried. I didn't wear underpants on my head though but.
It's not likely that wearing underpants on your head would have any effect on the sound emanating from your gob.

Yep, no doubt. He and his creepy, scary sons were a toxic mess poisoning Iraq and would, eventually have come to grief. I'm not going to speculate on when or how that might have happened but since we're including Hitler here it seems fair to imagine that had Saddam upped the ante vis a vis terror and mayhem the solidity of his position as Iraqui leader would have grown progressively less secure.

When he attacked and invaded Kuwait - threatening oil supplies - we invaded.
When he gasses and murdered political foes and dissidents we did FUCK ALL because it didn't matter.
Then when another jumped up twat, intent on being a "War President" comes along and claims he's a threat to the rest of the world with his nuclear arsenal that could have warheads exploding over London in 45 minutes, - Did ANYBODY believe this fucking claptrap? - we jump up and join in the fun.

Hitler, Napoleon, Pol Pot, Saddam, the shites that run Burma, GWB, Tony Blair all have one thing in common, two things in common; They're all posers and bullies, three things in common, posers, bullies and cowards. They were all con men with big ideas and rich friends and aside from the Burmese arseholes, they're all history. There'll be more along soon. Obama's shaping up nicely. Ooops! did I really type that?
Hope I'm wrong.

I've just deleted a whole bunch of rambling ranting guff concerning the not insignificant point that Blair and Bush were both proudly overtly Christian. Jesus must be so proud.

I'll let you have the last word JB cus we're waaaaay off topic now and I suspect we're both a bit tired of the argument. Good luck at the next elections in the UK. I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that the BNP don't gain any more politcial capital from anywhere over anything. I'd be completely unable to come home if they do.

I think that I'd agree to some extent about the timing, though I think that the invasion of Kuwait was almost unique in that it was an invasion of a sovereign nation, and actually there are very few examples of that since WWII.

I'll avoid the debate about religion, other than to say that I think that the fundamental problem is actually moral conviction: all the names you list share an unquestioning belief that they were right, and that's the real danger rather than the actual ideology as such. I think that the belief of US presidents in their 'mission to defend freedom' has been enormously damaging: JFK came close to starting WWIII, sponsored an illegal invasion of Cuba and started a war that makes Iraq look relatively minor. And he was neither especially religious nor particularly of the 'Right'...

As for the BNP, as long as we don't get conned into PR, I think they'll hit a brick wall electorally. Historically, the Far Right has usually been defeated as much as anything else because the Tories have shifted towards the Right, and I think that is fairly likely over the next few years.
All the Best.

I am butting in just to add that the fascists are also enjoying some abysmal electoral turnouts in the UK and in Europe as a whole. People abstaining almost always give an artificial uplift to minority parties. But, even so, we mustn't forget the total number of people in our country who actually took the trouble to go to the ballot box and cast a vote for fascism.

I should have replied earlier.

No, I have no intention of leaving the Labour Party. What would be the point?
I agree with most of what you say about the the LP and it's importance to the organised working class of our country and, when challenged, have been heard to say similar things.
I first joined the LPYS in 1956, (mainly because of their support for the 'ban the bomb' campaigners) but my membership has lapsed several times since then. Also I wandered around in the wilderness with Tony Cliff and Gerry Healey for a time but once they began to have desires to enter government I shook my head in disbelief and found my own way back to sanity again.
I threw up when 'Clause 4' fell to the wayside, but returned when comrades began seeking support to oppose the likelihood of New Labour signing up for a US style invasion of Iraq. But as Dickie pointed out to me, I had missed the New Labour counter-revolution inside the party. The party constitution had changed beyond my recognition and there was no mechanism left in the party to effectively express Socialist concerns. I despaired. But I take my annual pilgrimage to Tolpuddle each year; I listen to TB and admire his loyalty and committment to the Socialist cause and he does inspire me. BUT ... it will be a long struggle to put socialism back on the agenda in the Labour Party unless there is a dramatic internal upheaval. Despite what is happening, both with our continuing support for US global ambitions and the dreadful exposure of the criminal frauds being committed by our MP's, despite all this there is no sign of any resignations, any popular movement away from Blair, Brown and the evil Lord, and no sign that we will become a democratic socialist party again.

But yes, we will struggle on. Sometimes I think of us veteran comrades as being like the brave old sods who took over the Russian State HQ in protest at the declining values in their country and were blasted by tanks and guns organised by that drunken old arsehole, mmm ... I've forgotten his name.

I must have had my beer head on that day…it always makes me smarter than I really am.

Several experiments later I can confirm Martyn’s hypothesis. However there does seem to be a direct correlation between the sound emitted and the lead contained within your pencil. HB seems the most resonate.

It’s an argument I would make but these days without much conviction. The Labour Party means very little to the people who want to buck the system.

My problems with Labour, New or otherwise are bound up now in one issue and one man.
Obviously I can make it much more complicated and find convoluted reasons for deluding myself into tinking that being a member is a good idea.

It's just not worth it.

Occasionally, especially after seeing Tony Bennspeak at Tolpuddle and Burford, I'd find myself giving serous consideration to renewing my membership; fight the good fight from within and all that.

I'm not Tony Benn and , whilst I'm fully aware that it's not a fight that can be won by one octogenarian, it can't be won by an army either, nor is it worth the effort, so long as this man is still a member of the party, or even draws breath.
Oftentimes politician's reputations mellow and take on a sort of neurological sepia hue as the years following their retirement accrue. I'd offer up Ted Heath as an example. He'd have made a pretty good left of center New Labour PM, I reckon.
But this bloke just keeps getting nastier by the minute.

Tony Blair.

He knows he's a fucking war criminal. He'd just rather not have to acknowledge the fact to the UK public and the rest of the world. Bastard. So he interferes in the day to day political process of a sovereign nation. Which is pretty easy for someone who happily connived and contrived to bomb and invade another country that posed little or no threat to anyone.

Perhaps this might even be too much for Tony Benn.

He once supported my Union branch in a campaign to save a communications outlet. While he was PM!
True!