5/22/2010

Vote labour - Vote for hypocrites - Vote for toadying candidates who are wise after the event

I know I ought to be astonished to see that Ed balls and Ed Miliband are now criticising the war in Iraq, and Labour's record of being one of the two main instigators of the war. The problem is, nothing about the duplicity of the Labour Party comes as a surprise anymore.

The two "Ed's" excuse for being able to come out as anti war is that they were not MP's in 2003. The problem is, there excuse falls apart when you realise what they were doing in 2003.

Now if Ed Balls was that upset about the war in Iraq and the illegal invasion in 2003, wouldn't you imagine he would, as a matter of principles, resigned his job as advisor to the Chancellor ?

If he was that digusted he might ahve done a Robin Cook and resigned any positions of authority that gave credibility to the War ?

Of course not. Just months after the invasion, as a good loyal Brown man, as a toady of the new labour regime, he was selected for the then safe seat of Normanton.

Getting a safe seat or stanging up against the war in Iraq ? I know which side of the argument Mr Balls came down on.

So what of Ed Miliband ? It appears that in the period leading up[ to the war, Mr Miliband too was a government advisor.

He did go to harvard in thr 2003/2004 year, but as terms run from Autumn to Summer, he must presumably still have been with the government up to the start of the war in Spring 2003 ?

Of course, a year at Harvard would have been the ideal opportunity for him to express his oppostion to the war in Iraq in articles, essays and speeches. I wonder if Mr Miliband is willing to publish all the articles from 2003/2004 ? I would guess that given that he was selected for a safe labour seat in 2005, no such speeches, essay or articles exist.

So vote for political expediency. For for Ed.

8 comments:

JohnM said...

I shouted at the TV "AND WHAT ABOUT THE SYSTEM THAT MADE IT POSSIBLE - WHAT ARE YOU SAYING - SORRY OR HOW IT WON"T HAPPEN AGAIN"!

Sunder Katwala said...

I get where you are coming from.

But there is one flaw in your argument about safe seats, etc.

Balls did, during the 2004 selection in Normanton, criticise the decision to go to war, on the grounds that he thought that Hans Blix the weapons inspectors should have been given more time (so as to deal with the WMD issue and/or for any later military threat to have the broader international support at the UN which would give it legitimacy). He said this publicly and in the media several times in 2005 and 2006, though it does not seem to have been prominently reported.

I am not sure whether he did so after joining the Cabinet. He was criticised by Alastair Campbell for saying that the inquiry needed to be public to be trusted.

Red Rag said...

You do realise that you could change the Labour to your own party the Lib Dem and if we were talking about the coalition instead of the Iraq war it would be equally appropriate.

Nich Starling said...

You do realise that the last 13 years have been full of Labour hypocrisy don't you, topped off by claims that they were going to speak to the Lib Dems about forging a progressive coalition, only to turn up with nothing to offer and no credible plan for a coalition.

Frugal Dougal said...

I don't care where the war was: we're not like America - our armed forces aren't geared up for 2 wars at a time. What the hell was Blair doing taking us into a second, unnecessary war when lives were being lost in Iraq?

Johnny Norfolk said...

I am very glad you are at last seeing Labour for what they are. Com men.

DespairingLiberal said...

It would be great if anyone in Normanton happens to have copies of his election literature - I wonder what it said about Iraq?

Balls is a serial evader of facts with a long record, but, perhaps more seriously for Britain, any sort of study of his utterances in the media quickly reveal him to be not particularly bright, at least, not quite the superstar economics guru we were formerly led to believe. Can it be that the famed Brown/Balls intellectually dynamic Treasury partnership of the glory days was so much hot air and spin?

When questioned cleverly in those rare off-guard moments, both Balls and Brown have shown a lamentable lack of even basic economic knowledge.

Anonymous said...

under the coalition

your off to war with Iran

and according to Cameron we need Nuc weopons to keep at bay the Chinese

yes he said that in the first debate

But look at that idiot Fox

glad he thinks women going to school in Afganistan isnt important

and its a 13th cent crubbling country anyway

Now where are those MOD cuts

By your friends be known

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