... maybe more difficult when we bear in mind who Tony's friends are - e.g. the saintly Ken with his homophobe, misogynist, anti-semitic pals ...

Which tyrant are you predicting Tony Blair will remove next? The one I'd quite like to get rid of is Mugabe, but I think it's more likely the Tories will take action to get rid of him than Labour. Meanwhile Blair is unlikely to get any future expeditions through parliament, so is probably not a great vote for those in favour of removing tyrants.

Or do you base your voting on what has gone in the past, rather than what might bring about the best results in the future?

It appears that in your view Michael Howard is worse that Charles Kennedy, the former being being "damn-near contemptible" for being opportunist while the latter is merely "preposterous" for siding with and supporting genocidal tyrants and terrorist supporting Islamists. Funny that I'd have put the other way round with Howard as merely preposterous and Kennedy as nothing short of contemptible.

There is more of consequence than Iraq,it would be quite nice if someone attended to domestic policy,just so we don't start to think that all the money being squeezed out of us is to fund Blairs foreign policy.Iraq has been liberated,what about us?

You're absolutely right, Stephen, and that is why this old Tory, if he can steel himself to vote Labour, will put one in the ballot box for Tony for the first time ever.

David Gillies, I have never understood the Pollard thesis that the only moral stance on Iraq is (a) to back Tony Blair in supporting Bush; AND (b) to look the other way as he cuts every conceivable corner (including abusing intelligence) in order to do so. Like Michael Howard, I fully supported the Iraqi intervention but Blair's behaviour was characteristically devious and authoritarian (notably, the Downing Street-orchestrated campaign against Dr David Kelly). The Hutton Enquiry was a ludicrously one-sided affair whose outcome is accepted by almost no-one other than Lord Hutton himself, Blair, Alastair Campbell and Stephen Pollard.

I do not accept that support for Blair's Iraqi policy requires the Opposition to write Blair a blank cheque of support for his entire conduct of the war. This isn't a one-party state yet and the end does not always justify the means. In a far more dangerous situation, Attlee would never have allowed Churchill totally free rein to abuse the enormous powers of the state. Why should Blair be entitled to more?

Stephen,

You seem to be getting ever more desperate in your justifying to yourself why you can continue to back the Labour Party. 18 months ago, it was because whatever else they might do wrong, they would make the fundamental reforms that Britain's public services so clearly need. Since Labour's already weak proposals were watered-down beyond all recognition just to keep a majority of their own backbenchers on side, you've now moved on to saying we should re-elect Tony as a sign of our gratitute to our gallant war leader who stood shoulder to shoulder with our ally.
The only reason that Blair's stance on Iraq was remarkable is because he is a Labour PM. If the Conservatives had been in government (either under Howard or ID-S) then it is hard to believe that they would not have supported Bush just as strongly as Blair has.
It's time that the Government and their supporters stop whinging about lack of support from the opposition and remember that Conservative MPs were much more solid in their support for the war than Labour's backbench MPs were.

One of the mistakes we in America make is to think that Conservatives in the U.K. are similar to Conservatives in America when it comes to Foreign policy. This is partly due to Margaret Thatcher who was the exception rather then the rule. Many British Conservatives hate or resent the US as much as the members of the loony left. Edward Heath was for example a lackey of Georges Pompidou.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/125kixrf.asp?pg=1

Michael McGowan, Mike Wood: Labour's policies are dreadful, with the exception of support for the War. The Conservatives' policies are alternately pusillanimous and pandering, including their stance on the War. I regard the fight against Islamic fascism to be the predominant issue of importance today, thus my stance. Iraq is a necessary step along the road to victory.

The WMD controversy is a bagatelle. Blair made a tactical error in concentrating on them as a casus belli, but there were far more compelling reasons to take Saddam out. Everybody got (or appears to have got) the intelligence on WMDs wrong. So what? A brutal tyrant is gone, 25 million people have a fair crack at a better life, and Coalition forces are putting tens of thousands of fanatics in the ground for smaller losses in eighteen months than in one training accident in 1944.

David,

You're right. Blair did make a tactical error in concentrating on WMD. That error offered a hostage to fortune - one that was sure to be taken up by Lib Dems, the far left and those who actually were against the war.
You are also right that there were far more compelling reasons to take Saddam out. That's why Michael Howard continues to support the war in Iraq, it's why I supported and (judging from his earlier comment) it's why Michael McGowan supported the war.
The Conservative approach to the war in Iraq was identical to that set out by the U.S. administration. The difference in policies isn't between Conservatives and Labour - it's between Tony Blair and the rest of his party.
If any senior Conservative had been prime minister in 2002-3 (with the possible exception of Kenneth Clarke) then it is almost certain that Britain's role in Iraq would have been the same. However, one has to wonder how many more Labour MPs would have voted against the war if it had been proposed by a Conservative government.
If you really want to vote Labour to express support for Tony Blair then please consider whether Tony Blair will still be prime minister for long after the next election. If not then do you really want any of his likely successors who would follow all of Blair's dreadful policies but without having his few redeeming features?

Many British Conservatives hate or resent the US as much as the members of the loony left. Edward Heath for example

Apart from the fact that Edward (Traitor) Heath was a Conservative Prime Minister there is no evidence to support the idea that he is in any way a conservative.

David, I agree entirely about the importance of the fight against the fascist wing of Islam. As it so happens, I have no confident in Labour's ability to see that fight through to the finish, but no matter....at this stage at least. On WMDs, I also agree that Blair got it wrong but that per se this was not a cardinal sin. What I find quite inexcusable is the way in which the entire government machine was subverted to distort intelligence; to hound an innocent man into the grave and to muzzle the press. These are the hallmarks of a devious and authoritarian government, utterly intolerant of dissent and run increasingly by a cabal of unaccountable insiders. I have always found Tony Blair devious and authoritarian. His vanity and sanctimony have imbued him with a belief in his own infallibility which I find dangerous. He could have got himself off the WMD hook easily by admitting that he had made a mistake but pointing out how much better the world is without Saddam. However, humility is not one of Tony Blair's vices.

As for the Conservatives' policies, to the extent they have any, I can't see why they are pusillanimous and pandering. Quite the reverse. Their policies on health and education strike me as ambitious and excellent. Their overriding problem is that the guilt-ridden British middle classes are not yet in a mood to buy them because they still cling to the post-war "mustn't grumble" mentality which sees mediocre state-run public services as not only the norm but also "fair".

Michael McGowan, Both your posts were astute. Tony Blair is authoritarian and devious and for those reasons alone is very dangerous as a head of government. He also has a deep and abiding faith in his own infallibility, which, in a leader, is also hazardous to the health of a nation, as the Germans and others throughout history have found out.

As David Gillies says, the fight against militant Islam, which is even now at work on a propaganda war to subvert the history of the West (according to them, Christopher Columbus had several Muslims on board the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria; and there's more), is the defining issue of our time. But David Gillies appears to think we took Saddam out because he was oppressive and a tyrant, which has nothing to do with our fight against militant Islam. The British taxpayer doesn't pay taxes to involve itself in adventures against oppressive tyrants.

Mr Bush went after Iraq for two reasons: One, it was a warning for the more militant regimes in the region - Syria, for one, Saudi Arabia and Iran as two more - of what the US is capable of wreaking.

Second, it is easier to convert a secular society, i.e. Iraq, to a democracy and therefore a shining example in the region of what life can be like without living under a tyranny, than a theocracy.

But there is another, adjacent, point about Blair and the war. Blair did not feel strongly about getting rid of Saddam for any of the above reasons, which is why he was never able to present a coherent argument for a war to Parliament. And which was why he had to lie his way through and try to manage the whole thing by sleight of hand, as is his wont.

Blair was in the war for two reasons. One, to suck up to Jacques and Gerdardt, as unlikely as it seems at first glance. He was sent in to be a "modifying influence" on Mr Bush and advance the EU, coward's way of dealing with Iraq, which was to sell him more stuff. This was all in the service of Blair's advancement in the EU. (For American readers, he hopes to be named - unelected - president, a position he feels may be big enough for him.)

Blair found out that Mr Bush is a man of principle and is not vulnerable to empty eurowaffle. Having publically committed to the Bush plan, he couldn't get out without losing face, which is why he ordered our troops to Iraq. Having failed to persuade Mr Bush to go the Kumbayah route through the UN, he made the best of it and posed as a man of principle.

No Verity, I don't think we took Saddam out because he was a nasty piece of work. That he was is beyond contention, but I'm not naive enough to think that that was the motivation. His removal is more in the way of a beneficial side effect. The reason we went into Iraq is obvious just by looking at a map. The real problem is Iran, with Saudi Arabia and Syria as less pressing concerns. Notice which country borders all three of these nations? WMDs were a casus belli, that's all (and one that can only be depicted as spurious in hindsight). The toppling of Saddam was part of a process, not an end in itself. However, it's doubtful that Bush and Blair could have sold the true reason for invasion to the electorate. No matter: I regard the destruction of Islamofascism and pan-Arab nationalism as so pressing a matter that I don't care if the motivation was ulterior. I also dispute the claim that the Govt. hounded David Kelly to his death. Kelly way overstepped his authority and undermined the Govt. (intentionally or not) at a crucial time. He would almost certainly have been severely reprimanded or even sacked. But the decision to take his own life was his and his alone.

As for my charge that the Tories are both pusillanimous and pandering, their education policy contains an example of each. Firstly, their stance on vouchers is lily-livered. They have ruled out being able to use them to top up independent school fees, which vitiates their entire purpose. And the opposition to top-up fees is the clearest example of pandering I can think of. A truly radical policy would be to raise a one-time £50 billion bond issue, dole it out to the universities and tell them they're on their own, and can charge whatever fees they see fit. I'll admit that that is a risky proposition, but they are never going to see power again if all they offer is NewLabour-lite. There is a strain of anti-Americanism running through the Conservative party. It's not the visceral hatred of the Labour Left, more a sort of benevolent contempt, but it's there, and I am very unsure whether a Tory Govt. would have supported the US in the way that Blair has. I execrate Labour on virtually everything they do (I left the UK in 1999 as a result of Labour's '97 victory) but for me the prosecution of the war is the trump card.

"However, it's doubtful that Bush and Blair could have sold the true reason for invasion to the electorate."

Well, Blair certainly couldn't and didn't try because he had absolutely no idea, other than self-aggrandisement, what he was doing in the situation, which is why he had to buck and wing it. Mr Bush sold his programme to the American electorate honestly because he had clarity of vision. Blair didn't. Because he didn't understand it. He is not a bright man. He. does. not. get. the .point. Mr Bush, who is coherent on terrorism and militant Islam, did indeed get the support of the American electorate.

David, against the horror of militant islam the Tories' fiddling about with education is a gnat and that you introduce it into the same argument tells me you are not serious. And you say you revile their mindset. But you are going to vote for them. Voting for poison is not a good plan, a lesson that should have been learned given what happened to the folks who voted for Kool-Aid in the jungle of Guyama at the behest of Jim Jones.

Yet you left the UK as a result of their victory in 1999. Well, so did I, but I do not speak kindly of the Socialists just because I had the will to escape.

The Gramscian hydra has to be chopped off at the neck.

David,

I agree that some of the Conservative proposals for reform of our public services are not as ambitious as I would have liked, however I do think that they are a step in the right direction.
Yes, I prefered the previous policy of a parents' passport, whereby the money could be used (albeit at a discounted rate) for education in the independent sector. However a policy that creates an internal market within the state system, allowing good schools to expand by making the money follow the child, is much better than the centralising system that Labour has continued to create.
The Government may talk a good game on choice and diversity but we have now had seven years of them
- scrapping grant-maintained status and the assisted places scheme;
- piling on ever more regulation on school management teams;
- giving ministers the right to dismiss whole teams of school governors;
- making the national curriculum so prescriptive that - at some age levels - it now dictates what each child should be doing practically every minute of the day;
- putting targets for reducing exclusions ahead of teachers being able to take decisions to maintain order in their classrooms.
After all of this, surely any policy that would give parents more choice as to where their child was educated and let head teachers - rather than ministers - make more decisions as to how their schools are run, should be welcomed.
Again, I agree with you that some form of bond-issue to create endowments for universities, which would then be run independently of government, would be a risky proposition. It was effectively the Conservative position going into the 2001 election and was not at all well received. It's clear that higher education funding needs to be addressed but surely we must also agree that the Government's policy of setting an arbitrary participation rate of 50% makes the situation worse.
You are right that there is a "benevolent contempt" amongst some elements of the Conservative Party - there always has been. But this is certainly no worse in the other major parties (quite apart from the anti-American hatred that you also identify in the far left). and is certainly to be found amongst a number of the current Cabinet. What is also true is that the Conservative leaderhip has been overwhelmingly pro-American since 2975, whilst the Labour leadership has swung between anti-Americanism, isolationism and is now torn between the US (on security and defence measures) and Europe (on almost everything else).
I can't understand how you can doubt that a Conservative Government would have been every bit as strong in its support for the US. ID-S, as leader of the opposition, had taken a robust line on the need to oust Saddam Hussein. Whilst the Government were still talking about UN inspections and negotiated deals, ID-S made clear his support for regime change. Whatever faults he may have had, I do not believe that ID-S (who is said to be close to Donald Rumsfeld) would have waivered in his support for the US.
Similarly, both William Hague and Michael Howard have impeccable pro-American credentials. Had either been prime minister in 2001-3, then Britain would still have "stood shoulder to shoulder" with the US, following the 9/11 attacks, through the invasion of Afghanistan and the liberation of Iraq. The reason that I can be so sure is that that was the line that they took in opposition. Why on earth would they pass up the opportunity of scoring the cheap political points that the Lib Dems now seem to have a monopoly on, by needlessly tying themselves to an unpopular policy of invading Iraq and associating themselves if really they opposed the policy? Instead, Conservative MPs (not just the leadership) supported the Government on the issue, with only 15 Cosnervatives voting for the rebel amendment, compared with 139 Labour MPs and all 53 Lib Dems. Surely it is politically easier to oppose a policy, if you have any doubts at all, if you are in opposition than if you are in government.

Wow, this thread is getting quite long!

I doubt that I will cast a vote in the next general election. All I said was that if I were to, based on my current perceptions of the parties' relative stances re the war, I would be tending towards Blair. If I hear more robust noises coming from the Tories, and I see a few more pro-free market ideas, then I'll happily return to the fold. It would be hard to overstate how much I loathe New Labour's platform - the creeping (indeed, Verity, Gramscian) strangulation of the economy, the authoritarian excesses of Blunkett, the breakup of the Union into these ghastly 'regions' - all of that and more I hate. But right now I have lost confidence in the Conservatives to enthusiastically support the one issue that I find eclipses everything else. I want a bit of radicalism from Howard. I think there's a constituency for new, bold policies. The Tories have been running to the centre since Major's defeat and little good has it done them. New Labour still appears in peoples' minds to be the party of ideas, even if they are uniformly dreadful ideas. I feel like Ronald Reagan and the Democrats - I haven't left the Conservatives, they've left me.

Of course, what I really want to see is a minarchist, laissez-faire libertarian society with the government's tax take perhaps a quarter or a fifth what it is now, and three million civil servants cast unceremoniously on the scrapheap. I'd settle for a pledge from the Tories to scrap the HSE.

David Gillies - "You're absolutely right, Stephen, and that is why this old Tory, if he can steel himself to vote Labour, will put one in the ballot box for Tony for the first time ever."

"I execrate Labour on virtually everything they do (I left the UK in 1999 as a result of Labour's '97 victory) but for me the prosecution of the war is the trump card."

Gosh, you're a really exciting voter.

George Galloway beat you to it Stephen!

There is a big difference between the way conservatives "hate" America and lefties hate America. The conservative "hate" of America is a kind of mildy xenophobic/nationalistic but altogether harmless patriotism that demands a sense of superiority and slight contempt for other nations.
The reason lefties hate America is because it is a symbol of everything they hate. From their fiscal policy to their culture, everything goes against what the left believes in and this manifests itself in a hatred of everything about America, no matter how small or insignificant. See: http://www.iainmurray.org/MT/archives/000869.html

"Had either been prime minister in 2001-3, then Britain would still have "stood shoulder to shoulder" with the US, following the 9/11 attacks, through the invasion of Afghanistan and the liberation of Iraq."

Don't you mean nose to anus?

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