UKC

Doing well for himself. The c*nt. Maybe he can compare awards with Kissinger.


http://img2u.info/img/gef333844.jpg

In reply to Cú Chullain:

Been found guilty has he?

In reply to Cú Chullain:

Thanks for posting that, just wiped the vomit from the iPad!

In reply to Cú Chullain:

Wtf.

D

In reply to dale1968:

I'm sure all of those people who tout this line are willing to write to the Hague and demand that action be taken aren't they?

Aren't they?

In reply to Cú Chullain:

The man who killed the labour party? Maybe he got the award for that.

In reply to Cú Chullain:

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/celebrity/bill-gates-to-buy-gq-and-burn-...

In reply to Cú Chullain:

And the war crimes are?

In reply to Cú Chullain:

Kim Kardashian got Woman Of The Year so at least there's some balance.

In reply to Rampikino:
Whatever the technicalities about him being a war criminal or not, Tony Blair advises or has advised the ruler/president of Kyrgyzstan on how to improve his image, when he's been behind the machine gunning of civilians.

It seems a funny kind of award to give to Tony Blair with that in mind.

In reply to The Lemming:


The small matter of implementing regime change on the basis that Saddam had WMDs, UN experts told him this was not true, Blair produced "evidence" now known to be forged, Saddam was found to have had no WMDs, therefore Blair deliberately lied in order to make the case for war. Going to war to change another country's regime is prohibited by international law (articles 33 and 51 of the UN Charter), while the Nuremburg judgment of 1946 laid down that "to initiate a war of aggression", as Blair and Bush clearly did against Iraq, "is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole".

The man who has made millions while Iraqis died in their hundreds of thousands due to the havoc unleashed by the illegal invasion, and who, with breathtaking arrogance, seems to regard himself as above the rules of international law. Just because the ICC (to which the UK is a signatory) are too supine to do anything does not exonerate him of his deeds.

In reply to Cú Chullain:

Thanks for expressing this so clearly.

In reply to Cú Chullain:

Sadly, someone will no doubt be along to argue some legal technicality for why none of that makes him a war criminal.

But even granting that, being one of the key architects in an action leading directly to hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, a war of aggression and in no small part contributing to the current violence we see in the region as a whole, he certainly qualifies as an a-grade cvnt. I don't wish him a long and fruitful life.

In reply to Cú Chullain:

I look forward to The Lemming's riposte....

In reply to Rampikino:

http://www.arrestblair.org/

In reply to Cú Chullain:

Cu chullain,

This is one of the clearest descriptions of Blair's actions
I have seen. Excellent post

In reply to Cú Chullain:

Well, the Chilcot Report clearly showed that... Oh, hang on.........

In reply to Cú Chullain: What was the forged evidence produced by Blair that you say aided his argument to go to war? And can you point to the evidence that the UN experts told him that Saddam didn't have WMD?
Mark.

In reply to Cú Chullain:



Very well written. I would simply describe him as a murdering piece of filth, upon whom I wish a very unpleasent end. The fact that he is still at liberty is utterly ludicrous.

In reply to browndog33:

Here's the Wiki page on the Dodgy Dossier: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Dossier

Claiming to have WMD which would be ready for launch in 45 mins iirc

As for the UN experts... remember a guy called Hans Blix?

In reply to Cú Chullain:

He really does have psychotic eyes:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-29044261

In reply to Jon Wylie:




+1.

Although Mr Martin's " a-grade cvnt" comes a close second.

In reply to browndog33:



Much of the 'dodgy' dossier outlining the case for invasion, intelligence that cast doubt on the existence of WMDs was played down or omitted where as any evidence that consolidated the hawkish position for war did not seem to be as rigorously tested. The most famous of this is the '45 minutes' claim, which was pretty weak intelligence when the Mi6/JIC first received it, yet it was allowed to make its way into the dossier for war via a few tweaks from Alistair Campbell, we know that doubts existed at the time for the claim as various intelligence staff flagged their concerns that the claim was based on one not very good source. The lack of any context to the 45 mins claim, like the fact it alluded to battlefield weapons only or that Robin Cook concluding at the time, "It's clear from the private briefing that I have had that Saddam has no weapons of mass destruction in a sense of weapons that could strike at strategic cities' was largely suppressed or ignored. While the dossier was not the single document that led the case for war it was a cornerstone one that the tabloids jumped all over with their Armageddon headlines at the time, softening up the public and MPs perception in the process. Blair published the dossier with a nice little forward penned by himself, he was aware of the concerns about the 45 mins claim and the context in which it was being presented, he was being leaned on heavily by Washington who had already decided on military action to present the evidence to fit their policy. I will concede that 'forged' is a strong word, I shall definitely settle for 'knowingly misled', or 'lied' though, appalling enough if we were talking about the rolling out of some domestic education or policing policy, utterly repugnant if we are talking about making the case for war.

>And can you point to the evidence that the UN experts told him that Saddam didn't have WMD?


Blix stated that Saddam 'could' have WMD, he had only inspected about a third of the sites that they had 'intelligence' for and had found nothing. He stated further at the time "We said if this is the best (intelligence), then what is the rest? Doubts arose from that.'' Blix said he spoke to Mr Blair in February 2003, ahead of the invasion, about his team's findings.

'I said to Mr Blair 'Yes, I also thought there could be weapons of mass destruction', but I said 'Are you so sure? Would it not be paradoxical if you were to invade Iraq with 200,000 men and found there were no weapons of mass destruction?'.

Once the Iraqis realised that the hawks in Washington really wanted to bomb the shit out of them they began to cooporate with the inspections. Blix said the Iraqis were finally making progress in opening up to inspections and should have been allowed more time.

'We warned the Iraqis that they needed to be more active and they became more active and we reported that to the (UN) Security Council, that we were actually making a great deal of progress,' he said.

Dr Blix added: ''We could not exclude that there was still something hidden, because you cannot prove the negative, but I think they should have taken to heart that there was a change in the Iraqi attitude, that there was more cooperation and that things that were unresolved were becoming resolved.'

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/7051059/Hans-Blix...

Hardly the 'smoking gun' or any basis to invade another country with.

In reply to Cú Chullain:
I've read that just before the invasion Saddam Hussain was offering full access to anywhere people wanted to look.

Out of a desire not to be invaded I imagine. (That's not to say he wasn't horrible etc...)

In reply to Cú Chullain:

Surely you are all forgetting what in inspiring leader he was. How he, in partnership with the great George Bush Jnr, made sure that the Americo-British Empire will be a force to be feared for generations to come. That you and your children and your childrens children will live in peace and security...

Ok, seriously now, it was a war in the Middle East, did anyone at the time honestly believe it was for anything other than oil? If you did, then it was you who was intentionally fooling yourself and nobody else.

Tell me, after he started the war, did you all vote him back into office? Ermm... Yes, you did, you didn't let those innocent iraqi deaths put you off one little bit.

Are you happy to make sacrifices in your standard of living to save those people? You might say that you are, but, rest assured, you wouldn't allow wars like this to go ahead if you truely were.

To anyone who tells me "well, look at the big protests", I say this: "Politicians in this country are elected by the people and can be removed by the people". Lets say our current PM launched an invasion of belgium, stormed the beaches and attacked brussels, do you think he would last 5 minutes in office? No, because it is an unacceptable war. Blair lasted because you all accepted his war.

So, by all means, bring out all your hypocrisy, just be careful that high horse doesn't tread on a land mine.

In reply to henwardian:

I actually think he did it because he thought it was 'the right thing to do', as he so often gave as his reason for doing things, and didn't look a gift horse in the mouth with regards to oil.

In reply to henwardian:







Wow - Amen to that!

E

In reply to Timmd:

Yes, I think he was probably genuinely well intentioned (albeit misguided/ill advised). I'm afraid I just don't believe he is an evil man (terrible intended consequences, not unintended ones make someone evil). And nor Bush. Saddam was.

In reply to Enty:

Bizarre if I post just "+1" it states "•Please don't use ALL UPPERCASE in your message text"

Anyhow

+1

I lived and worked in Iraq, and most of the countries in the Middle East, when Saddam was in power and afterwards.

As the expression goes it's all about OIL stupid

In reply to Robert Durran:


Exactly.

E

In reply to henwardian:

Didn't vote for the mealy mouthed cu-nt in 1997 nor in 2003. You seem to forget that a million people marched against the war in London ( I was one of them).

D

In reply to Cú Chullain:

Thanks Cu Chullain. What are your thoughts about Saddam needing to be taken out of power?
Mark.

In reply to Dauphin:


I think I covered that with this bit:

You, as an individual might have been against the war but either:
a) The country as a whole wasn't against it (if I remember rightly, the opinion polls at the time said the country was actually against the war as a whole)
So, more likely:
b) The average person didn't give enough of a toss about it to make the war stop.

In reply to Robert Durran:


Even if that's true, where's his contrition?

In reply to henwardian:

No it didn't cover it. It was just a broad sweep which ignores the problem with the totality of executive power in u.k. government system (no need for a vote on war, in the mother of parliaments no less) and our non representative democracy. You also ignore how much the media gave the government and the intelligence services an unchallenged platform from which to spray their propaganda. Maybe had Iraq been relatively quiet and submitted to the expected nation building, even without WMDs he would of gotten away with it. Even new labour realized they didn't stand a chance with him in charge after 2005 and moved behind Brown, who turned out to be yet another turnip.

D

In reply to omerta:


Good question. Maybe he is in denial to at least some extent. Or maybe he genuinely believes that he made the best choice in the circumstances; that leaving Saddam in power would have been worse (and who is to say it wouldn't have been? Assad is still in power and that's got pretty messy).

In reply to henwardian:
Maybe they should of explained to the nation hat they were borrowing billions from the future to pay for their heist? That would of stopped their little plan in its tracks immediately. What is this democracy you speak of?

D

In reply to henwardian:




What actions would you say people could have taken?

In reply to Dauphin:


But there was a vote in parliament on the Iraq war, as far as I'm aware, the first time any prime minister had consulted parliament and its set a precident (hence last summer's vote on Syria). The PM retains the power not to have a vote but in the current climate that would only be used where urgency or surprise was required and at the end of the day he (whoever he or she happens to be at any point in time) is the most powerful person in the country who has that power granted to them by virtue of our representative democracy. As someone else has already pointed out, Tony Blair won the next election, we get the leaders we vote for.

In reply to pec:
Purely symbolic. There were attempts to get legislation tabled that meant a vote would be needed to go to war but were overturned, something to do with Royal Prerogative, don't remember the details. Robin Smith was the only frontbencher to resign as he voted against the government in the public charade.

D

In reply to Cú Chullain:
Thank you for that.

In reply to henwardian:

My dear chap,

you'd know more about how we behaved than we ourselves. Weren't you Tony's biggest supporter then? Shirley your rage of hypocrisy is just because of your reform from sin?

In reply to Robert Durran:

Tony Blair has only ever served Tony Blair. I formed that judgement at school in the 60s. His dad is very decent indeed and I don't know how he spawned the man who took us into a war against what I believed were the principles on which our nation had been built.

The harder people protested against TB the greater the glory he believed he would win by being proved right in the end.

In reply to wercat:


Did you know him personally? Not having a go at you; it would be genuinely interesting if you elaborated.

In reply to Cú Chullain:

Hanging's too good for him.

In reply to Dauphin:

Was it purely symbolic when the commons voted against Cameron on Syria last year?
MP's could have voted against the war in Iraq, many did but not enough to stop it. We do live in a democracy, just because you or I don't get what we want all the time doesn't mean we don't.

In reply to pec:

You've changed the goalposts. We we're discussing the vote in 2001. Sure it is a democracy. Just one with a very different shape than we are led to believe exists. Secretly and overtly gamed to ensure that we have very little influence over it.

No top down changes to the NHS my friends.

D

In reply to Cú Chullain:


The legality of the war doesn't rest upon the actual discovery of WMDs.

The threat from WMDs was exaggerated by all sides - Saddam's erstwhile colleagues, Saddam himself, the Opposition in Iraq and the coalition.

Even then the iraq survey group did report that the means of production but not actual weapons were moved to Syria in 2003.

So it seemed that sanctions had prevented the production by restricting raw materials from being available.

Blair undoubtedly felt that sanctions were a big problem and even those who defended the sanction regime blamed Saddam, not the sanction regime, for the damage they caused. But this confirmed Blair's belief that Saddam was the problem.

The merkins used resolution 678 as their main argument (plus 687 and 1441) and you need to be a bit of an international law expert to understand the arguments for and against. That there is a range of views on that shouldn't surprise anyone.

The Guardian did a round up of views at the time:

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2004/mar/02/uk.internationaleducationne...

In reply to pec:


Sort of. Cameron could have gone ahead with military action anyway but doubt he would have survived long in office afterwards.

In reply to henwardian:


I certainly didn't and will likely never vote labour again.

In reply to browndog33:



Cu shall have his own views.

But in my opinion, I'm sure most would agree that Saddam should not have been in power. In which case he joins a long list of world leaders. It doesn't mean we have the right to go in guns blazing. More importantly though, you don't put the fear of WMD in to you public, cite support for terrorism and Al Qaida, then launch a massive invasion preceded by "shock and awe". You certainly do work on building a rock solid coalition of support, garner full UN approval in advance and generally build a legitimate case.

We essentially wrote a blank cheque for massive civilian casualties by going in with an approach that we were defending ourselves from an imminent terrorist threat, with no plan for what was to come after.

While we all agree that knife crime needs to be stopped in the UK, you don't achieve that by putting a bullet in the head of every black youth you come across. The target might be justified, but the means not. Same went for Iraq.

In reply to David Martin:


Unfortunate phraseology! Perhaps substituting goal for target might make what you were trying to say clearer

jk

In reply to David Martin:


Even with a completely different generation of politicians with policies you are in favour of? that really does seem very petty.

In reply to Robert Durran:

About as petty as those who still think Thatcher is still relevant to the conservatives ?

In reply to Cú Chullain:

The great thing about all of this is that this is a Scottish war criminal. So it's got nowt to do with 'us' after the Yes vote.

In reply to Dauphin:


I don't remember the media at the time, were the intelligence services spraying propaganda? It seems suprising, I would have thought they would be passing information to the government and staying below the parapet, that being what a bunch of spies are sort of supposed to do. I'd be prepared to be corrected though.
The media might not have done a very good job of providing a balanced picture but we all had internet back then, we all had access to non-british news sources like Al Jazeera if we actually wanted to inform ourselves properly rather than swallowing the presented agenda whole.

In reply to wercat:



I think I was probably in the "disapproving but not enough to bother my ass to actually do something about it" crowd back then, I can't remember exactly. I'm certainly not excusing myself of my share of responsibility here, I'll willingly accept that I allow the less fortunate nations of the earth to be trampled and then give some money to charity to salve my conscience.

I'm not really going to get into who or what might have been "sinful" or "evil" because I don't really think that brining religious dogma into the situation is useful.


In reply to Timmd:


If 50% of the UK population opposed the war then a million strong rally means that only 1 in 25 people who opposed the war came to the rally. I'd be inclined to think that if over half the UK population arrived in central London, the country would grind to an immediate halt and the government would have had to reverse their decision. If the government failed to respond to this direct expression of democracy then they would be an illegitimate government and the moral course of action would be for the people to remove the government, by direct action, if necessary, up to and including storming parliament and placing the hated Mr Blair under arrest.

But that isn't going to happen because people only get angry enough to really make their feeling felt on a national level about things that directly affect their costs and qualities of living, like.... oh, the price of petrol.

In reply to henwardian:

I think you're being a little harsh, personally I think 1 in 25 is a pretty large number, given that not everybody will have been able to afford to travel, and some would have been looking after sick relatives, or new born/very small children, have been immobile by injury, or other legitimate reasons, like mental health issues*.

*I'd have marched, but I had panic attacks...

In reply to Dauphin:

Blair got re-elected after the war..

In reply to henwardian:


My recollection, which is probably more of just a general feeling, is that many in the establishment (intelligence, military, so on) were actually quite keen on getting stuck in to a nice winnable war. Iraq represented a large, but largely defanged army, that could be wiped out and provide a bit of a boost to our big-balls feeling. Frank Ledwidge has written a fair bit about the attitude in the military at the time, a sort of rampant enthusiasm and can do attitude that only emboldens politicians. It became a snowball.


And I think that's unfair. I attended every march I could. Then simply stopped going once we invaded. What was the point? A million people on the streets, shoddy intel and a clear lack of moral high ground...and Tony invades anyway. It became pretty apparent (and clearly to many far sooner) that all the marches in the world won't going to change the course we were on and that we were a joke - being allowed the opportunity to make ourselves feel like we had a voice when we had none.

Tony Blair damaged a lot more than Iraq and our credibility. He damaged a trust in government. He was the boy who cried wolf ("We have evidence, we can't show you it, but you just have to trust us - its the smoking gun"...it was the complete opposite). People will die as a result. Causes we should intervene in we are now reticent to. Despots left, right and centre are using the term "terrorist" to justify crackdowns on anyone they deem dangerous to themselves, and the drivers for terrorism have been given the biggest boost possible. In terms of misadventures, this one is up there with the mad kings of old expending countless lives on ego trips.

In reply to Timmd:



Yes, I am being harsh, but only to provide a counterpoint to the seems-to-me status quo where people prevaricate, provide excuses or complain but fail to take action the actually change these things. (Though I'm well aware that if everyone took immediate action to change whatever they saw as wrong or annoying, we'd live in a very chaotic country!)

To address your points individually:
Taking sheffield as an "average distance from London", it would cost less than a tenner return based on 4 people car sharing. That's in the ballpark of a bottle of bucky, I refuse to believe that there are many people in the UK who couldn't lay their hands on a tenner if it was really important to them. Even if this was the case, there are plenty of single men and women with cars they could give a lift to 3 or 4 others in.

Parents of babies and small children might not want to be in the vanguard if it was necessary to storm parliament but there is no reason that parents can't travel with babies and children. They do all the time infact, I see them every day on the bus/train/park bench. The internet seems to suggest that around 1 months rest after birth is common, so I'll allow for 70 000 mothers that cannot attend. That's about 1 in 1000 people, a tiny proportion.

Mobile through injury? Doesn't count in my book. I see people with wheelchairs lots of places I go too, granted there is terrain that it is challenging or impossible to traverse with a wheelchair but this is London. No reason for them not to be there if they feel strongly enough about the issue.

Looking after sick relatives. Tricky one this. It's going to depend a lot on each situation but realistically, we are talking about being away from said relative for 2 days here and having advanced notice (prep for the protest) that this was going to happen. There may be some people who cannot leave but I believe again that it would be a tiny proportion of the whole.

Mental health issues is a biggie. There are statistics out there but I can't find a breakdown by type of mental health problem and I honestly wouldn't know how to judge what percentage could be fit to attend a protest. Perhaps someone else could help with this?


In my opinion, the bottom line is this: Yes, there will be some people who actually _can't_ attend a protest, but for the vast majority, it is the case that they _won't_ attend because it is too inconvenient for them.


It's also worth pointing out that if those with police hats on really cared, they could vote for a strike to coincide with the protest and remove the only obstacle to direct democracy in action.

In reply to henwardian:

You're missing one important point. Tony, and his ilk, played the all important trump card on the public. That was, we were at imminent risk of attack by WMD.

Of course, that was incorrect in just about every respect. But I knew a number of people who, while opposing in principle the invasion, were skewed in to supporting it by that claim - they were literally fearful.

That playing on fear, in my opinion, is utterly inexcusable.

In reply to David Martin:
>>

This was it for me. It offsets all the good (and let's be clear, in the early years the Labour governments did a LOT of good, even if they failed to unpick some of the excesses of the Thatcher/ Major years) that he achieved. Vainglorious little turd

In reply to David Martin:



Tony Blair said in The House Of Commons that he had no doubt that Saddam Hussain posed a risk to the UK with his WMDs.

From a post further up, henwardian thinks anybody who at the time thought it was about anything other than oil was intentionally fooling themselves.

It's a way of holding people responsible I guess, seeing people as intentionally fooling themselves. It's not a way of thinking I can relate to, deciding that lots of people would intentionally fool themselves.

In reply to Timmd:




Hmm. I can see your point and it's hard for me to really remember what I and others were thinking back then, and, more importantly, I'm probably being prejudiced by hindsight. But even if Iraq had all the wmds they were accused of, they could still never have been a threat to the UK. There are 3000 miles between the UK and Iraq and nobody could ever have suggested that iraq had ICBMs, it would have been proposterous.
For quite a number of years now, I have been viewing foreign policy in terms of how it relates to control of oil and it fits together so obviously for me that maybe I ignore the doubts of others.

I absolutely agree with what David said about the use of fear as a tool. So much so that I think V for Vendetta should be compulsory viewing for all school pupils.

In reply to browndog33:

I think he may be referring to the ' Dodgy Dossier ' :http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Dossier

The Chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq Scott Ritter:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Ritter constantly stated that they had no WMD's or the capacity to produce them. He also said in the run-up to the war that he could not get any air time on the major news channels to point this out, they seem to have had a preference for people who would support the government line.

In reply to henwardian:

The lack of delivery system was seldom discussed. The perception was one of dirty bombs in Trafalgar square, the passing on of such weapons to Al Qaida, long range missiles, and implicitly, ICBMs.

Obviously anyone with a reasonable understanding of military hardware would be well aware ICBMs were a non starter. And many of the claims, from both the US and the UK, were soon after contested. But most people don't have that understanding. The claims were thrown out often enough, and by people who should have known better, in the context of the "powers that be" supposedly having access to information that we didn't, that it was entirely believable for many.

I don't begrudge people for falling for it out of fear. I do begrudge those who didn't care and simply liked the idea of us going off, with sexy military hardware, and giving a sh1tty sounding Arab country a bloody nose.

In reply to David Martin:


Yeah, that just wasn't the perception at all.


It takes less than a minute to check this stuff on the internet.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3466005.stm

Why don't people look this sort of stuff up before they get into such a lather? It's really inexcusable ignorance.


The 45 minute claim wasn't that spectacular, as any country with access to chemical weapons could probably deploy in that time frame.

There was never a claim that Britain could be attacked, The Sun made the story news by claiming that Brits could be. This referred to British troops in Cyprus, who could be targeted.

During the Gulf War Saddam had sent Scuds to Israel, Cyprus is just a few miles further than Tel Aviv, depending on your launch site. So Brits in Cyprus had been under possible threat for a long time.

During the Gulf War Saddam had been threatening to attack Israel with chemical weapons but thought better of it, the result of him so doing would have led to conflict that would have changed the future for decades, if not longer. Israeli's in Tel Aviv were living in sealed apartments, whilst the government had issued gas masks to the entire country. The problem here is the Arab states, who may well have turned if Saddam had been able to spark a sufficient response from Israel.

Saddam continued to believe that the threat of WMDs would prevent him from being attacked (by Iran as well as others), so he was content to allow the threat to maintain itself even after he lacked the direct capability. He bluffed and lost.

This is all in the Duelfer Report.

In reply to Cú Chullain:

How dare anyone criticise poor old Tony, look at what a resounding job he's done bringing peace to Israel and Palestine, two countries which looked like they'd never stop killing each other, living in peace and harmony, all thanks to Mr. Blair and his tireless struggle to broker peace.







Wait, what?

In reply to krikoman:

i'm sure i've posted this before but I love it and it's worth a re-post

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/war/what-gives-asks-tony-the-prick-20110...

In reply to Cú Chullain:


Correct.

The only reason he became a Catholic was because of his quilt, and so he could be absolved of his sins.

I hate what he did to the labour party, too.

In reply to winhill:

So you're saying evidence wasn't misrepresented by government and the invasion was simply a result of Saddam wanting us to believe he had wmd?

That's quite some revisionist history. I recall a very very different tone at the time. Why else would a million have marched in the street?

In reply to David Martin:

There's a good deal of truth in it, from my recollection. I can clearly remember thinking Saddam Hussein was acting like a naughty schoolboy, teasing Dubya with the idea that maybe he had WMD, maybe he didn't... More stupidity and bravado than machination I would have thought.

Still doesn't excuse the enthusiasm of the Pentagon to go to war, with or without plans for the aftermath, and even less Blair's efforts to join in the game.

In reply to krikoman:


It's more complicated than that, there was a whole patchwork of reasons hiding under the duvet

In reply to IainRUK:

Technically he didn't. U.K. didn't leave Iraq until this year. He was reelected during the occupation. New Labour chinned him off as he was unelectable as the debacle of Iraq played out. They understood that they stood a better chance even with a turkey like Brown leading them.

D

In reply to David Martin:

Why will you never vote labour again? Tony Blair was the death of the LP as we all understood it, even as most of his ministers understood it, It has climbed back from the Blair low point these days and should be judged on it's own merits.
As indeed the Tory party should be judged Post Thatcher (much the same!)

In reply to Dauphin:



Brown wasn't a turkey, he was a dangerous idiot with right wing views. It's good the party have got rid of two dangerous idiots like this both at once.

In reply to Al Evans:


Then the douchebags in charge go and elect the wrong brother.

E

In reply to David Martin:


I have to say that comment is rather unfair.....on cvnts.

In reply to toad:


Yes but it was all undercover work wasn't it.

Getting into bed with the wrong factions when he should have been involved in the thing that really mattress.

In reply to Cú Chullain:

Do you think Dave and the boys would have done anything different?

In reply to Removed User:


We can speculate, does it matter? What we can discuss is what Tony actually did, rather then what he theoretically may have done.

In reply to Cú Chullain:

Indeed.