Scrutable

Let's not forget Saddam Hussein was a murderous tyrant who had chemical weapons and used them on his own citizens and in war. It was a land of death before we invaded and the invasion was swift and efficient.

"Iraq War" perhaps makes kids to think of a war. What Blair expected was a fast invasion and capture of the country, which we got. The failure was all Part 2 - the emergence of a subsequent war that Blair did not foresee. It's not at all clear this was an inevitable outcome.

Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 31, 2020 2:54 am

I'd rank invading Iraq as worse than austerity, for example.

And other people wouldn't.

That's as unlikely to change as the historical facts themselves, of course. Happily, though, we're in a time now where such discussions are thankfully unnecessary, because Blair isn't anywhere near power, and three leaders in a row have denounced the invasion, with Starmer arguably doing more to fight back against it, and more usefully, than either Millliband or Corbyn.

More people again, though, I'd wager, are more bothered about labour somehow creating a global banking crisis and "bankrupting" the UK economy in 2007-08 than Iraq. That's the criticism I see most of in former Labour voters. There was no money left, after all.

lpm wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 31, 2020 8:20 am

Let's not forget Saddam Hussein was a murderous tyrant who had chemical weapons and used them on his own citizens and in war. It was a land of death before we invaded and the invasion was swift and efficient.

"Iraq War" perhaps makes kids to think of a war. What Blair expected was a fast invasion and capture of the country, which we got. The failure was all Part 2 - the emergence of a subsequent war that Blair did not foresee. It's not at all clear this was an inevitable outcome.

Indeed. And a long time ago on a forum far far away, Bob Rayner posted evidence showing that in terms of the human development index, Iraq is in a much better state now than it was. Probably more than that alone, I don't know.

Grumble wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 31, 2020 8:12 am

If we were thinking of electing Blair then it would be relevant.

The attitudes of party members towards a person's actions are relevant whether or not that person is running for office, because they tell us something about the character of the party. For example, if there were a party whose members saw nothing much wrong with the actions of Hitler, that would tell us something important even if Hitler were not personally up for election.

As has been pointed out, Starmer personally is not much like Blair. Which is why, if you had been paying attention, you would have seen that he has not personally been criticized here. What I am trying to do is explain why it is reasonable for the Left to vocally dislike Blair, as that had been presented as something faintly ridiculous. The only reason this derail has gone on as long as it has is because of the procession of people coming in to say variations on the theme of 'the Iraq war wasn't that big of a deal, and Blair was alright, even good actually'. If the well to do Liberals of Scrutable had found it within themselves to say something like 'yes, the Iraq war was awful, a stain on the reputation of the party, and Blair is a war criminal who in a just world would face trial, but fortunately Starmer was strongly opposed to it and should be much better', or even just nothing, we could all stop. But unfortunately, people like you not only do not care particularly about what happened far far away in the mists of the early 2000s, but are also vaguely annoyed that other people do.

I see we moved on to 'the Iraq war was good actually' now. Jesus christ.

We've moved on to 'Iraq War wasn't some solo Blair thing, it was supported by the large majority of the country at the time for a few good reasons and a few bad reasons.'

"and some of the outcomes were good ones"

secret squirrel wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 31, 2020 8:42 am

... What I am trying to do is explain why it is reasonable for the Left to vocally dislike Blair, as that had been presented as something faintly ridiculous ...

Fair enough but a lot of the Left argument against Starmer seems to be "He's a Blairite. Blair invaded Iraq therefore Starmer is in favour of illegal wars".

FTR I'm not saying you personally push this line but I've seen it rather often on Facebook.

lpm wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 31, 2020 8:59 am

We've moved on to 'Iraq War wasn't some solo Blair thing, it was supported by the large majority of the country at the time for a few good reasons and a few bad reasons.'

I disagree with the second part, prior to the war the prospect of invading Iraq without proof of WMD or a UN resolution only had the support of about a quarter of the population. https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/ ... -war-polls

There were at the time huge protest marches all across the UK. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2765041.stm

For a few months after the 19 March invasion there was a majority in support of the war. That’s usually explained as being part of a ‘rally round the flag’ effect. But that majority disappeared within six months.
http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/d ... 130313.pdf

JQH wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 31, 2020 10:13 am

secret squirrel wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 31, 2020 8:42 am

... What I am trying to do is explain why it is reasonable for the Left to vocally dislike Blair, as that had been presented as something faintly ridiculous ...

Fair enough but a lot of the Left argument against Starmer seems to be "He's a Blairite. Blair invaded Iraq therefore Starmer is in favour of illegal wars".

FTR I'm not saying you personally push this line but I've seen it rather often on Facebook.

True. There are a lot of idiots on the left, as with everywhere else.

El Pollo Diablo wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 31, 2020 8:28 am

lpm wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 31, 2020 8:20 am

Let's not forget Saddam Hussein was a murderous tyrant who had chemical weapons and used them on his own citizens and in war. It was a land of death before we invaded and the invasion was swift and efficient.

"Iraq War" perhaps makes kids to think of a war. What Blair expected was a fast invasion and capture of the country, which we got. The failure was all Part 2 - the emergence of a subsequent war that Blair did not foresee. It's not at all clear this was an inevitable outcome.

Indeed. And a long time ago on a forum far far away, Bob Rayner posted evidence showing that in terms of the human development index, Iraq is in a much better state now than it was. Probably more than that alone, I don't know.

At the time Saddam Hussein was starving the Marsh Arabs and hundreds of thousands were being killed each year. He was also doing his best to convince people that he had a WMD program that hadn't delivered.

For example opening a castor oil plant next to the pesticide plant in the Falluja complex that had been used to make nerve agents during the Iran-Iraq war.

That certainly would look like someone tooling up to switch to chemical weapon and toxin production.

Any chance we can split the Iraq war discussion out of the Starmer thread? I think we've established that he was against it at the time.

JQH wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 31, 2020 10:13 am

secret squirrel wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 31, 2020 8:42 am

... What I am trying to do is explain why it is reasonable for the Left to vocally dislike Blair, as that had been presented as something faintly ridiculous ...

Fair enough but a lot of the Left argument against Starmer seems to be "He's a Blairite. Blair invaded Iraq therefore Starmer is in favour of illegal wars".

TBF I consider the Iraq War as a symptom of the things the Left found wrong with Blairism rather than the sole cause, and while the Iraq War was a one-off, the underlying philosophy remains unchanged hence the unease about the “centrists” taking control of the party once again and apparently beginning to purge the left-wingers.

Blairism got to the point of “actually the Tories are probably right about everything, if the Left opposes something we should probably do it on general principles” of which Iraq was the nadir but the “Choice agenda”, PFI, demonisation of benefits claimants, creeping privatisation of health and education, immigrant bashing, white elephant big-ticket defence projects, unfounded tax cuts, shambolic IT investments and, most impactful of all, the economy- and reputation-wrecking deregulation of the banks, all flowed from that.

You draw up a list of shame for the Coalition: austerity, workfare, bedroom tax, tax cuts for millionaires, the NHS deforms, the Govian assault on education, tuition fees; Coalition apologists can rightly say these are all merely incremental changes to the policies the Blairites championed.

Corbyn left himself wide open for accusations of anti-semitism but Miliband had to put up with the same sort of brick-bats from the Blairites for daring to challenge the legacy of the Blessed Tone.

The irony being Labour still faces considerable headwind for the Global Financial Crisis for following the supposedly sensible centrists dogmatic insistence on aping the Tories economic policy against the better judgement of the Left. A similar misjudgement by the LIbDem “centrists” killed their party as an electoral force. Yet it is the Left that supposedly puts ideological purity over electability. The logic of the TInGe split is no clearer a year on; Corbyn is gone, their guy is in charge, all they managed to do was to midwife a Tory landslide and cast themselves into political outer darkness.

For the Left they don’t want to spend the next four years pounding the streets and door-stepping voters to ensure a Labour win in 2024 just for Starmer to announce in his first speech that after 14 years of Tory misrule has left society and the public sector on its knees, Labour’s main priority is to carry on in exactly the same way because TINA! Because if so why even bother.

1997 should go down as a missed opportunity to shift the Overton Window leftward as the good things Blair did were entirely managerial and were mostly undone the second Labour was out of power with little lasting impact.

Oh God. The Corbynites are out in force on Facebook posting lots of links to opinion pieces about why Corbyn isn’t antisemitic...regardless of the actual report:

https://www.doubledown.news/watch/2020/ ... S8qxvXoXrg

https://youtu.be/H6oOj7BzciA

https://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/jewish- ... K_bBFlqsQU

Little lasting impact - except for the existence of schools, hospitals, an educated generation, higher living standards, end of OAP poverty...

headshot wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 31, 2020 1:03 pm

Oh God. The Corbynites are out in force on Facebook posting lots of links to opinion pieces about why Corbyn isn’t antisemitic...regardless of the actual report:

https://www.doubledown.news/watch/2020/ ... S8qxvXoXrg

https://youtu.be/H6oOj7BzciA

https://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/jewish- ... K_bBFlqsQU

I'm not going to watch any videos, but the third link seems completely reasonable - criticism of Israel isn't inherently antisemitic. And AFAIAA the report didn't actually say that Corbyn is antisemitic - have you read it?

Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 31, 2020 1:12 pm

headshot wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 31, 2020 1:03 pm

Oh God. The Corbynites are out in force on Facebook posting lots of links to opinion pieces about why Corbyn isn’t antisemitic...regardless of the actual report:

https://www.doubledown.news/watch/2020/ ... S8qxvXoXrg

https://youtu.be/H6oOj7BzciA

https://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/jewish- ... K_bBFlqsQU

I'm not going to watch any videos, but the third link seems completely reasonable - criticism of Israel isn't inherently antisemitic. And AFAIAA the report didn't actually say that Corbyn is antisemitic - have you read it?

Well, there is EAC's post, and I feel that if this had been another kind of bigotry that a leader had turned a blind eye to and/or failed to manage, it might well have been seen as fair to to say that they are very much part of the problem. Unless for e.g. you don't accept any of the arguments made by and arising from BLM.

discovolante wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 31, 2020 1:24 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 31, 2020 1:12 pm

headshot wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 31, 2020 1:03 pm

Oh God. The Corbynites are out in force on Facebook posting lots of links to opinion pieces about why Corbyn isn’t antisemitic...regardless of the actual report:

https://www.doubledown.news/watch/2020/ ... S8qxvXoXrg

https://youtu.be/H6oOj7BzciA

https://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/jewish- ... K_bBFlqsQU

I'm not going to watch any videos, but the third link seems completely reasonable - criticism of Israel isn't inherently antisemitic. And AFAIAA the report didn't actually say that Corbyn is antisemitic - have you read it?

Well, there is EAC's post, and I feel that if this had been another kind of bigotry that a leader had turned a blind eye to and/or failed to manage, it might well have been seen as fair to to say that they are very much part of the problem. Unless for e.g. you don't accept any of the arguments made by and arising from BLM.

Corbyn has been incredibly tolerant of antisemitism when he should have been actively opposing it, which is what the report says. ETA which is terrible and entirely worth of criticism in its own right. It doesn't say that he personally is antisemitic, which is what lpm and headshot have claimed, nor that Labour is (or was under Corbyn) institutionally antisemitic, which is what the third link in headshot's post is talking about.

So for instance, I criticised Starmer a while back for his responses to BLM and to black representation within the Labour party, but I didn't call Starmer racist.

lpm wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 31, 2020 1:05 pm

Little lasting impact - except for the existence of schools, hospitals, an educated generation, higher living standards, end of OAP poverty...

I have it on expert advice that schools and hospitals existed before 1997 and continue to do so, that living standards continue to improve at different rates and poverty is back in spades under the intellectual heirs of Blair.

If you mean “additional schools and hospitals” then we paid through the nose for them (and continue to pay for them) through various ursurious PFI schemes, cos “Private is always best” when we could have had more and cheaper through more traditional public financing, and Labour continues to have to defend themselves against accusations that because Blair and Brown supposedly spent like sailors on leave they can’t be trusted with the public finances regardless of our lived experience of the last ten years.

Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 31, 2020 1:33 pm

It doesn't say that he personally is antisemitic, which is what lpm and headshot have claimed,

It said downplaying antisemitism was a form of antisemitism.

And Corbyn promptly released a statement downplaying antisemitism.

lpm wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 31, 2020 1:46 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 31, 2020 1:33 pm

It doesn't say that he personally is antisemitic, which is what lpm and headshot have claimed,

It said downplaying antisemitism was a form of antisemitism.

And Corbyn promptly released a statement downplaying antisemitism.

His response is certainly very problematic and troubling, along with being politically useless. It's far more important to focus on the existence of antisemitism within Labour and the left, and stamp it out, than to complain about the existence of spurious claims and exaggerations and attacks on his mates.

I see it like the people who deny there's any problem with police racism. Some of them are actively racist, some of them just don't give a crap about racism, and some of them actually do but have a blind spot about anything affecting people or institutions that they like. I would like to be more comfortable about where Corbyn sits out of those options (none of which are good), but I don't think it's clear from what I've seen of the reports about the report.

Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 31, 2020 1:33 pm

discovolante wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 31, 2020 1:24 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 31, 2020 1:12 pm

I'm not going to watch any videos, but the third link seems completely reasonable - criticism of Israel isn't inherently antisemitic. And AFAIAA the report didn't actually say that Corbyn is antisemitic - have you read it?

Well, there is EAC's post, and I feel that if this had been another kind of bigotry that a leader had turned a blind eye to and/or failed to manage, it might well have been seen as fair to to say that they are very much part of the problem. Unless for e.g. you don't accept any of the arguments made by and arising from BLM.

Corbyn has been incredibly tolerant of antisemitism when he should have been actively opposing it, which is what the report says. ETA which is terrible and entirely worth of criticism in its own right. It doesn't say that he personally is antisemitic, which is what lpm and headshot have claimed, nor that Labour is (or was under Corbyn) institutionally antisemitic, which is what the third link in headshot's post is talking about.

The EHRC report goes further than that and criticizes people from Corbyn’s office for political interference in complaints about antisemitism. He wasn’t just passively tolerant but actively set out to prevent or hinder internal investigations.

The report also complained about the leaders office interfering to hurry up cases in the correct direction and complained about others interfering too. The EHRC says that *all* interference is wrong.

My post was poorly expressed. I wasn’t accusing Corbyn of being specifically anti-Semitic per se, but rather tolerating it.

My FB friends are arguing about how it’s a stitch up and using those links to exonerate Corbyn and cast blame of the centrists. As usual.

headshot wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 31, 2020 4:58 pm

My post was poorly expressed. I wasn’t accusing Corbyn of being specifically anti-Semitic per se, but rather tolerating it.

My FB friends are arguing about how it’s a stitch up and using those links to exonerate Corbyn and cast blame of the centrists. As usual.

I'm seeing similar - guess it's the party line.