Who or what was the handmaiden of Brexit?

"The Labour Party, by its own self-indulgence, was the effective handmaiden of Brexit... Our combination of misguided ideology and utter incompetence allowed it to happen" Tony Blair  

The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change is a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to making globalisation work for the many, not the few.

SELF:

Localisation is vital to slow climate breakdown.  Not more globalisation that worsens the climate catastrophe.

Tony Blair's Labour took us into two disastrous wars on foreign soil that has left far too many parts of the Middle East in turmoil.  He did nothing to stop the arms trade while PM, so we Brits are fueling the war in Yemen and have done so from the outset.  Immoral Labour under Tony.  Upright Labour under JC.  3 election wins for Tony.  0 wins for Jeremy!

I thought the effective handmaiden of Brexit was the refusal of Jo Swinson and the LibDems to countenance Corbyn as a temporary PM, as one way to stop Brexit. This meant that they were unable to have a formal Remain coalition to defeat Johnson last week.  The Brexit Party was able to compromise and so stood down in every one of the seats where the Tories won in 2017.  And Brexit won by 80 seats.

I think it was the LibDems that was the first party to agree to Johnson's call for a General Election.  That put pressure on Labour to also agree, unfortunately.

Nicola Sturgeon was prepared to compromise with Corbyn in case of a hung Parliament .  But not Jo Swinson. Where does Jo stand on retaliation with WMD?

Brexit is making a rod for our own back.  Difficult, fractious relationships are generated from lots of talks to get new agreements when the EU arrangement was working fine and was not a problem.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it!

Remembering what went wrong over our so virtuous military intervention in Iraq

This is written ten years on since London was awash with 1-2 million opponents of our nation's intention to attack, invade and occupy Iraq.  "Britain's biggest ever political protest"  (Andrew Murray in the Guardian 15.2.2013).  This blog has partly relied on that article (here, in double quotation marks) to catalogue the many blunders of those who should have been men and women of integrity and honour.  Instead, I think, they became war criminals and terrorists.

1. Iraq is steeped in history.  It is the birthplace of civilisation.  Indeed, the birthplace of Abraham who was the father/founder of three world faiths - Judaism, Christianity and Islam.  Even so, they are at loggerheads and, there is an absence of understanding or even respect amongst them.  Each faith believes that it alone has the Truth and Right on their side.
2. There was an over reliance on what the enemies of Saddam Hussein were saying about his weapons of mass destruction (WMD).  An over-reliance because he was no longer our friend but was our enemy by this time.
3. An under-reliance on finding the evidence for WMD before the attack commenced on the 19 February 2003.
4. Our crime of aggression in attacking Iraq seems to have been about finishing the job from the Gulf War of 1990/1, when we failed to remove Saddam Hussein and had been kicking ourselves ever since for not doing so.
5. Saddam was no friend of Al-Qaeda, not an Islamist or militant Muslim and, he governed a secular state.  Yet, it was widely believed that he was, in order to help justify attack, regime change and occupation by ourselves - and retribution for 9/11!
6. The UN inspectors were not allowed to finish the job before our premature and over-enthusiastic desire for the opening shock and awe attack.  Unseemly haste, sidelining, even dismissing our own, Western, weapons inspectors.  They didn't come up with what we wanted them to say, so we went ahead anyway before their final and definitive report confirming that there were almost certainly no WMD.
7. The UN did not "give the attack a patina of legality." Andrew Murray (patina = shallow covering or cosmetic gloss)
8. The war did not make the Christian West safer from terrorism.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  We saw martyrdom videos showing that the martyrs saw themselves as soldiers defending Islam from the Christian Western attackers and occupiers of holy Muslim soil.
9. The Iraqi people did not welcome the invaders as liberators.
10. "Tony Blair was motivated solely by his secret pledges to stand by President Bush come what may."
11. "Consideration of legality and British public opinion scarcely registered with him."
12. "The Iraqi people have paid a staggering price" for the unwarranted and unlawful eight year war.
13. "The war was justified by the dodgy dossier" and a student's dissertation.
14. Justified by: "The 45 mins Iraqi missile threat."
15. There was "Duplicitous diplomacy."
16. Saddam Hussein - a one time ally and excellent customer of our highly valued arms industry and traders.
17.  This man and many tens of thousands of his citizens were wiped off the face of the map without a trial for him or, UN support for such extra-judicial killing by ourselves.
18. Even after Saddam was removed from power and we were in total control throughout the country, still no WMD could be found.  In other words, we were completely fooled and our intelligence experts and politicians proved, yet again, to be in the wrong.  They were led up the garden path.  They are guilty and were gullible.  They are war criminals.

We Brits always love our wars away from our shores!

THE WEST IS WEDDED AND WELDED TO WAR - led by the might is right US/UK!

Tony Blair is so well meaning in his warlike actions. He greatly respected Mgt Thatcher's premiership and she was a great fan of Churchill who authorised the overthrow of democratically elected Mosadeq in Iran in 1953 and supported our attack on Egypt in 1956 over the Suez Canal. This tradition of 60 years of warfare, of using the military on foreign soil, greatly helped our Anglo Catholic Tony to join conservative evangelical George W in launching the war of terrorism on 10/7 after the criminal act on 9/11! Bouncy, chuckly, irrepressible Tutu said 9/11 was a criminal act rather than an act of war. However, our Tony being well intentioned, charming, nice and such a superb speech maker is not good enough, me thinks. But it is for the Labour Party who adore him!

Tony is simply the latest in a long line of British PMs who love warfare or, war fighting as he prefers to call it. Churchill, even after our very necessary victory in 1945; Eden, with Egypt; Wilson in supporting the USA over Vietnam but without sending troops; Thatcher with the Falklands War and that unlikely victory for us Brits; Major with the 1991 war to oust Iraq from Kuwait; Blair with his wars until he came badly undone with his last attack on an independent, sovereign nation in March 2003.

Centuries of warfare amongst the W European nations and taking their wars abroad to win their empires around the world, culminated in the not so grand climax of the World War in two halves. That finally silenced their guns at each other and the EU was born with the Treaty of Rome.