New Labour Leadership Plotting Deteriorates into Farce

I have just read the Guardian report that the Blairite faction around Milburn are still pressing Miliband to stand in the leadership election and intend to nominate him to force his hand. Their fall back stalking horse is Charles Clarke. At the same time David Miliband continues to play the role of the blushing innocent whilst in recent weeks has taken every opportunity to tour round tv studios and lunch with an exhausting list of newspaper editors and politics correspondents.

This puerile plotting within the different New Labour factions is making the Labour Party look ridiculous. The whole leadership election is deteriorating into farce and is beginning to look more like a student union election than a serious democratic process for determining the future leader of our party and our country.

I am calling on all these New Labour playground plotters to start behaving with some dignity and to think about the effect they are having on Labour's election campaigns in Scotland, Wales and local government.

The electorate don't mind a party having a proper political debate, in fact as we saw with the Conservative and Lib Dem leadership elections, they quite enjoy it if it takes place in an open and friendly atmosphere. What people don't like is the behind the scenes backbiting and plotting that New Labour factions around Brown, Milburn and Miliband are subjecting us to at the moment.

Let's demonstrate the political maturity of having an open, friendly and dignified election with a range of candidates representing the breadth of views within the broad church of our party.

The Red Cross Report on Iraq Confirms our Worst Fears but Questions need to be asked about Britain's Role Elsewhere.

Today's Red Cross report on conditions in Iraq confirmed our worst fears about what Iraqis are experiencing on a daily basis. The report stands in complete contrast to the spin we receive from Ministers. A stark example of how bad it is for ordinary Iraqis is that when asked what would most improve the quality of their lives, Iraqi parents responded by appealing to the authorities to at least remove the dead bodies from outside their homes each day so that their children did not have to continue to see the corpses on the streets decomposing. The consequences of the war initiated by Blair but funded by Brown will live with the Iraqi people and ourselves for generations. And yet Blair and Brown still continue to justify it.

It isn't just in Iraq that Britain's foreign policy is contributing to deaths and lives blighted by physical injury, torture and fear. New Labour's Britain supplies miltary aid to the brutal Columbian regime, whose senior miltary commanders have recently been exposed as having direct links with the drugs trade.

The Justice for Colombia Campaign has revealed that over 500 trade unionists have been killed since the regime of President Uribe came to power in 2002 and this year is set to be even bloodier than the last. The Colombian military continues to work with paramilitary death squads with total impunity and murders, torture and disappearances of opposition leaders, trade unionist students and campaigners are still everyday occurrences.

So when MPs and Trade Union General Secretaries appear on platforms opposing the war and the occupation of Iraq and calling for human rights in places like Colombia, just ask the questions:

How is it that in the election for Labour leader you can advocate support for Gordon Brown, joint leader of the present New Labour administration, that has perpetrated this war and supported with aid the brutal, murderous regime of Uribe?

How can you proclaim your peace and progressive credentials when your aim is to install Brown and his team of courtiers into office, the very people whose actions have brought about this brutality and terror on the populations of Iraq and Colombia?

After More Deaths in Iraq How Can Anyone who Voted for the War Think They Can Now be Entrusted with the Future of our Party and Country?

I find it deeply ironic that media commentaries are filled with outrage over the selling of the stories of the military personnel captured by the Iranians and yet in a week when more British soldiers are killed and a new round of suicide bombings claims the lives of more Iraqis there is no outrage being vented at those who took us into this disastrous war.

Quite the reverse in fact, the media is currently gearing the country up to accepting as innevitable as their next Prime Minister not only one of those Members of Parliament who voted for this disaster but someone who also wholeheartedly supported the war by delivering the funds needed to prosecute this military aggression.

It is now widely accepted that the decision to implicate Britain in the invasion of Iraq was the most catastrophic foreign policy mistake since Suez. And yet the media only accepts as serious candidates for the leadership of the Labour Party a series of Ministers and ex Ministers, such as Miliband and Clarke, who voted consistently for the war and still support it.

In the light of the 655,000 Iraqi deaths and over 130 British soldiers killed I find it incredulous that anyone who voted for this dreadful act of brutal folly could even consider putting their name forward to lead our Party and country.

The only hope the rump of the New Labour elite has is that Blair can be blamed solely for the war in Iraq and that on his departure their collective guilt will be lifted.

Blair may well have been the originator of the deal to back up Bush's invasion plans but let's be clear every Member of that Cabinet and every Minister had the same choice as Robin Cook. That was to go along with supporting the war or alternatively to stand up for what was right even if it did mean resigning from office and the loss of career.

Those that put career before principle bear responsibility for the consequences of this war and every tragedy that visits itself on both Iraqi and British families.

How can any of them after their behaviour over this critical issue now think that they should be entrusted with the future of our party and country?