Progress column
My Progress column this week looks at Chris Mullin's diaries and their verdict on the Blair years:
http://www.progressonline.org.uk/2011/09/07/looking-back-on-new-labour/
posted by Luke Akehurst at 12:19 pm
Wednesday, September 07, 2011
http://www.progressonline.org.uk/2011/09/07/looking-back-on-new-labour/
About Me
- Name: Luke Akehurst
- Location: Oxford, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom
Labour Party activist since 1988 - firmly on the moderate wing of the party. Member of Labour’s NEC 2010-2012 and since 2020. National Secretary of Labour Students 1995-6. Parliamentary candidate for Aldershot (2001) and Castle Point (2005). Hackney Councillor (Chatham Ward) 2002-2014, Labour Group Chief Whip 2002-09, Chair of Health Scrutiny 2010-2014. Supporter of Europe, NATO/nuclear deterrence, Israel, electoral reform. Guardian reader. Dad. Oxford resident. Unite union member. Employment history as a Labour Party Organiser, Local Government Political Assistant, Director at a Public Affairs company. All views expressed in a personal capacity. The rest will become evident from reading the blog.
2 Comments:
"Looking back to those early years, long before the shadow of Iraq fell across the New Labour project, several thoughts occur to me."
Mullin has made clear in earlier books that he voted only very reluctantly against the Iraq War.
From memory, I think he even claimed that anti-war protestors made war more likely!
Personally, I never really had that much time for him even when he was saying the right things.
2:42 pm, September 08, 2011
Many people in the Labour party glided easily from hard left to hard right but Mullin did not complete the journey.
However, he has endorsed a great deal of what Blair did. The man who opposed the Falklands War supported all Blairs wars except Iraq. And he only opposed that with great reluctance despite plenty of evidence of false statements at the time.
I think that Mullin even claimed in an earlier volume that anti-war protestors made war more likely!
I hope that he has changed his mind on that one.
In the run up to the war, Blair repeatedly claimed that Saddam Hussein had earlier 'kicked out the weapons inspectors.' In actual fact, the weapons inspectors had to leave in order to avoid being killed in the bombing raids ordered by Clinton and Blair in 1998.
10:04 am, September 09, 2011
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